When I am troubled I turn to Joseph Campbell for guidance. Here he talks about the power of death to illuminate life.
"I think the idea of life after death is a bad idea. It distracts you from appreciating the uniqueness of the here and now, the moment at you are living. For example, if you think that when you die, your parents will be there and you'll live with them forever, you may no longer appreciate the significant moments that you share with them on earth.
Every moment is unique and will not be continued in eternity. This fact gives life its poignancy and should concentrate your attention on what you are experiencing now. I think that that is washed out a bit by the notion that everyone will be happy in heaven. You had better be happy here and now. You'd better experience the eternal here and now.....
If you concretize the symbol of heaven, the whole situation disintegrates. You think for example, that eternity is there and your life is here. You believe that God, the source of energy, is there and you are here and that he may come into your life or he may not. No No - that source of eternal energy is here - in you - now"
If Hope had died in Thailand my deepest feeling after the loss, would have been my eternal and unquenchable regret that in her early life I was not as present as i could have been.
Is this not the challenge that death provides us. In the certainty that we all die, do we live? In the certainty that we lose all that we love, do we love them enough in life? In the truth that we die alone and with nothing, do we spend too much of our limited energy accumulating and looking after things?
