A Waste - Part 3

I've been thinking: Maybe what people really mean when we say "What a waste" is how sad it makes us when someone dies, because it reminds us of our own impermanence. Did you ever notice that even when you don't know the person, there's a compulstion to say or at least think, "I'm sorry..." and when you hear or see things like I described last week, to think "What a waste..." Why is that?

Maybe because we all experience loss and so we can connect to the grief that is a part of letting something we love go. Maybe we say "I'm sorry" to them because we need to hear it ourselves, for a loss that has not yet healed within our own being. Compassion for others is rooted in compassion for ourselves. Maybe someone else's loss is a reminder to bring compassion into our own life, so that our own heart can heal.

Maybe because deep down in our hearts, we recognize that every single person is our brother and sister, born of the same Source that we are - One Divine Source; they are us and we are them in the end. When a brother or sister dies, on some level it's a reflection of our own death. It reminds us that we are impermanent and that our time here is temporary. Some day, some time we will die too. What happens then, we can't be certain. Yet what we know is that we will no longer be in the form we are in at this moment. And maybe the part of us that enjoys this physical life is saying, "Oh - I'm sorry to think about letting that go."

Maybe what folks mean when we say "I'm sorry" or "What a waste" is that we hope our own life will not feel like a waste when we die, so we won't feel sorry for ourselves. Maybe the heart of who we are is, in that moment, screaming out for recognition. Maybe it sees an opportunity to say, "Hey - wake up! Your time is limited! Fulfill your dreams!" Maybe the death of someone else - even someone we don't personally know - is a wake up call for our own Soul. Maybe it's an opening for us to reflect on our time here so that we can stop denying our magnificence and start living it.

Maybe that's part of why "feeling more death" allows us to "find more life."


©2010 Cecilia L. Zúñiga. A Year To Live. All Rights Reserved. Reprints, copies or reproductions of any kind must be accompanied by copyright credit line.