"Sometimes love will pick you up by the short hairs...and jerk the heck out of you." - Denise Dobbs, Northern Exposure, Survival of the Species, 1993
"I am going to concentrate on what's important in life. I'm going to strive everyday to be a kind and generous and loving person. I'm going to keep death right here, so that anytime I even think about getting angry at you or anybody else, I'll see death and I'll remember." - Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Do The Right Thing, 1992
(I think we can thank Carlos Castaneda and his stories of Don Juan Matus, brujo, for this consciousness in the mainstream media of death as teacher. At least that is where I learned the wisdom of making death your ally - not a friend but a helper nonetheless)
"Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek & find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." - Rumi
(to live in avoidance of mortality is one of the barriers)
What Is Due You
If I left kisses
on your lips I would expect,
even demand so
sternly precisely
nothing in return. I would
hold you to that, chained
with your promise to
simply accept these kisses
as what is due you.
September 10, 2009 9:22 PM
That Rumi's quote lingers in my head. How to live, as though you are about to die, simplifies our choices, clarifies our motives.
ReplyDeleteMany might say that the price of that clarity is too steep. I, however, have not found it so. In my experience it is true that people will generally resist being conscious of death.
ReplyDeleteI am certain that the price one pays for wisdom includes intimacy with one's own mortality. As has often been noted, humility is an easy tone of consciousness for mortal men and much more difficult if men fancy themselves immortal.
Love the Rumi quote and the poem.
ReplyDelete