While in therapist school one of
the exercises involves crafting your own timeline. You are asked to include
major milestones, family members, significant events, and whatnot. This
timeline isn’t just a history rehearsal, but is carried into the future –
projected milestones and deaths of important people and family members. The
idea is to review the people and events that have shaped your history, and then
to “look into your future” and anticipate other shaping events. Writing down the
actuarial expected dates of others’ deaths can be eye opening, revealing both
their mortality and the relatively nearness of that mortality.
This interest in mortality is not
limited to therapy students however. The Christian tradition, especially the
monastic schools also appreciate acknowledging and accepting death – one’s own.
This has a number of affects. One is that we must face our mortality and grasp
it as real. No matter how well we may feel at the moment, or how well life is
working for us right now, we will die. We will not be able to avoid it. This
realization is intended to help us let go of our own plans; our own egos that
seek to live forever. In remembering that we are mortal, we can both
acknowledge that we are not God and our lives are relatively short.
We have some choices to make.
Knowing our mortality, we can go for the gusto and leave behind only those
things that will perish and fade – money, houses, cars, stuff. Alternatively,
we can let our mortality move us toward more permanent endeavors – other people,
dispersing grace, growing into the likeness of God, showing compassion. These
will not fade but will last far past our own deaths.
During Lent we have a chance to
reflect on our own mortality, to correct our direction, to pursue values that
actually mean something. We don’t have forever; many of us don’t have much time
at all. When we come to our moment of death, what will become of us? What will
become of you?
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