Think "Ent"

The horizon has suddenly darkened for the three of us living in the Casa. Let me remind you that I am living with a Latter-Day Saint family, or rather a mother and her daughter (Magi). Magi’s grandmother arrived last weekend for a visit, and all throughout the week they have been seeing the greater Madrid area. Friday was a particularly hot day, and a few minutes after they came home, the grandmother almost fainted because of heat stroke. Doctors and an ambulance came (note: healthcare in Spain is rise with its own levels of bureaucracy, just like everything else) to check on her, and right she is in the hospital. Things are not very good, but they are looking better. She has stabilized but will still need a few more days in the hospital to recover.

Mar de Ajo - Cole Rise

Needless to say, this has had quite a shock on the family I’m living with, and as a natural consequence I begin to think of life and death: how fleeting and how quick life is, how death is around us like a blanket. I don’t think about death as a process, a slow fading-out. I think of death as something that happens in a moment – you’re here and then you’re gone, all at once. No wasting away, because your life is snuffed out in one moment.

On the other side of the argument, we are born just to die. We are always dying from the moment we are born, and we are all entrenched in a march towards the inevitable.

Willow ent - Newline Cinema

As I get older and older, I fear death less and less. I belong to a Church that believes existence extends beyond our limited sphere – both pre-Earth life and after it. Because of the nature of our existence, time also becomes less important; I figure that if I don’t do something now, I will be able to do it later. Despite what it sounds like, I am not advocating laziness, but an existence which takes into consideration a longer lifespan. (Think “ent” from Lord of the Rings. They’re trees which live for ages and ages, and they talk and move and act slowly.) Rather, it is my personal philosophy that we will get multiple chances to do things over and over again, and we may be bad at it the first time – but the joyous news is that we can get better.

In a more cosmological vein, I believe existence extends beyond the confines of what we’re given in these seventy, eighty years here. I believe I will be able to continue learning, growing, and improving in the next life. What I don’t learn here, I will have an opportunity to learn at a later point. Note that I don’t want to wait until later, but I only have so much time and energy here. Additionally, my capacity for thinking and understanding may not allow for learning all I want to know. Case in point: the mind of God. I hope to one day understand everything He understands and think the way He does, but I think that there are more planes of thought involved which I do not have access to at this time.

Hubble Image - Jet in Carina

As a result, I think of time as more circular rather than linear. I’ve thought about this a lot regarding conversations – a conversation should not be something that you have at one time. Rather, you can talk about something, go away, think about it, experience a bit more life, and then come back and talk about the same thing with new ideas or new perspective. (Gasp – this is the reason why we always talk about the same things in Church! And to remind us of what we should be doing.) My philosophy on life is that it’s more circular than linear, and that I will have many opportunities to do the things I love. Now, my task will be to take advantage of the opportunities at the optimum time, instead of letting them pass and missing the boat as I wait for whatever is better “just around the corner.”

I don’t think that there is much to fear from death – or at least I don’t have much to fear from own. Other people’s deaths, especially people I care about, frighten me deeply. I don’t want to be left behind, I don’t want to figure out how to live without them. Concerning my own death, I’m afraid of the pain that will come with it, but I think it will be one of the most interesting experiences of my life. I look forward to reuniting with people and entities, such as my grandparents and my cat, after death, as well as reuniting with people I did not get to meet on earth. It’ll just be another adventure.