Читать книгу Before We Say Goodbye: Preparing for a Good Death - Ray Simpson - Страница 12

Deep inside every human being there is an ache. We can try to drown it in restless activity, drug it with addictive substances, or isolate it by putting up defences. If we do this, our life becomes sound and fury, signifying nothing.

One philosopher describes this ache as ‘the existential loneliness’. This ache may become acute when someone close to us dies, or in the season of falling leaves and encroaching dark, or when we leave behind some familiar part of our lives, or when we find ourselves alone.

It may even throb when something triggers a sense of mystery – we fall in love, we give birth to a child, we observe a glory of creation, we witness a tragedy on our TV screen.

Perhaps we have a strong desire to hold on to some special feeling or experience, yet deep down we know that this is as futile as pretending that a snapshot can be the reality of every morning after.

Some never recognize the ache for what it is. The reason for this ache, in the words of one writer, is that ‘in the middle of life we are in death’. We want to achieve, to possess so much. A capacity for life seems at times without limit. Yet we know deep down that nothing will last. It will all fade away.

Our days are like grass.

We flourish like a flower of the field.

The wind passes over it and it is gone,

and its place knows it no more.

PSALM 103:15,16

That is the ache. The ache is there as a ‘prompt’. It prompts us to accept our mortality. Only when we accept that we shall lose it all will we be free to live fully, not as a right, but as a gift.