Facades

How do you think it feels to die? Not death itself. That moment when you can see life slipping out of you. You know it’s time, you can see death, you can touch it, but you are not there yet. How do you think it feels to see this life you know, fading? Everything you held dear, friends, family, accomplishments, all of it becomes absolute.

I think you are scared, of the new life that is about to start. You are angry that you didn’t have time to tell the people you love everything. You wish you could have been everything they wanted you to be, but couldn’t. I imagine you have a few people you want to love on, one more time. Regret fills your mind; you didn’t mean to leave so abruptly.

But still, in all this, you are glad to have relief from all your limitations in this body. You can’t wait to fly, explore places where the obstacles of your past have no say in what you can or cannot do. At that moment, you are ready, but you are also afraid. Every second that passes, life is slipping further. This is not something many of us would like to think about; it’s scary,

So every day that we are not at this point, we live, the best way we can. Praying and hoping that this moment is far from coming true. What we seem to forget, is that the moment can be at any time, any place, and it could happen to anyone.

This fragile link we call life that separates every moment, from that single one, is the same link holding together the things in our lives we hold dear. It’s the one thing that allows you to live the life you do, and experience it the way you do.

And like the moment life fades out of a person, slowly, in our everyday lives, we are stuck between two worlds; the one you know and the one that is to come. We wake up every day to hustle because we don’t know what life will look like if we didn’t make enough money. Not a lot, just enough to be able to live within the means you are used to.

The things we value are more likely to be taken away more than they are likely to be multiplied. This world is rough like that. Whether it is friends, money, family, or whatever, we want to grab on to it with everything we have. So when those little death moments come, we fight with everything we are.

We have grown accustomed to the life we know, although we know these small deaths happen, we never want to imagine them on ourselves. People lose jobs and become poor, but we can’t tolerate that thought about ourselves. Marriages break, children die, spouses die, people run mad, others become paralyzed, but we cannot entertain the idea that it could be us.

Every day we wake up and try to maintain the life we know, we fight to ensure these things that happen to others, don’t happen to us. We are safe, in our heads, but at any one moment, remember, the things we know could change, everything we love could be taken from us. So we fight, every day, at the very least, to stay where we are.

There’s this person you have become, worth of respect; someone people love to adore, you are loved and appreciated, this is the person you know. But sometimes you almost slip up, you almost go out of character, you almost do the most outrageous thing you ever could do. Your family would hate you; the respect you have earned over your entire existence would die. The person you know you are would be ruined.

So you are stuck in two places. A place where you made a small mistake and the world as you knew it changed and one where you never made one. These are the little-death moments many of us go through every day.

You are wondering whether you should sleep with that rich person for a few coins if it means living the life you know you were meant to. You want the luxury, but your family would disown you. You are wondering whether you should start selling drugs to survive, because the pandemic is killing you, even without contracting the corona.

You are wondering if you should go through with that illegal deal if it means living a great life. But you risk getting arrested and shaming your family. After all, this country loves thieves; that’s why they are the leaders. Why wouldn’t you want a piece of the pie, even though its small scale? If there is a god, surely, he would understand why you had to do it.

In those moments, you realize that your craving for the things you say you want, is less potent than your fear of the unknown. You crumble at the thought of what the new world has to offer, a world where friends, family, lovers, and what have you, hate us. Where they judge everything we do, and we don’t have the same amount of love as before.

You realize that while your life has been a gradual journey to these things that you long for, that drive is less passionate than your fear of being alone, judged by the whole world, and having to start rebuilding from the mistake.

How all the work you had done to be the person you knew, the person the world knew you to be, would be null and void. That if you wanted to continue living in a mirage of the same life, you had to convince people that you were still the same person, that it was a mistake.

In those little deaths, lies the realization that you were not as passionate, or driven, or focused, or willing, or free, as you wanted to be. You were not as liberal as you thought you were. That most of the beliefs you have about yourself are facades. That although you were working on it, there was still room for improvement.

This doesn’t invalidate all the work you’ve done; it merely exposes areas that need growth. The ones that are holding you back from the full realization of who you are. Who creation meant you to be. The person who the universe fights to align with their destiny. You are bold; you are strong; you are free; you are willing; you are fighting; you are doing everything you can, and living like you are already there.

These little deaths are blessings. We might not have the courage to face what would have been if we had made the mistake, but we know the areas we need to grow. Not in the way the world expects us to be, but in the path, that creation laid out for us.

In those moments, we freak out, and then we offer gratitude. We acknowledge the absurdity and how close a call we came to losing grip of life as we know it. Most importantly, we see the things that are keeping us from our true selves. Not the one the world around us expects, but the one we see when our eyes are closed, and the world doesn’t matter as long as you are true to your most authentic self.