Beginnings & Endings
For a while now, Duck had had a feeling.
‘Who are you? What are you up to, creeping along behind me?’ Duck asks Death, who has been padding behind her for some time in his faded nightshirt and slippers.
‘Good,’ said Death, you finally noticed me. I am Death.’
Duck was scared stiff, and who could blame her?
‘You’ve come to fetch me?’
‘Oh, I’ve been close by all your life – just in case.’
‘In case of what?’ asked Duck.
‘Life takes care of that: the coughs and colds and all the other things that happen to you ducks. Fox, for example.’
Duck tried not to think about that. It gave her goosebumps.’
You’ll have to read Wolf Erlbruch’s ‘Duck, Death and the Tulip’ to find out what happens but needless to say Duck’s ending is contained in the beginning of this tender story. In my client Renée’s case it was a brain aneurysm that unexpectedly plucked her out of life. Renée had come to me to explore how Ayurveda and yoga might help to nourish her journey as a loving wife and mother. She was a full-time barrister who wanted to improve her energy levels and explore the creative life she’d always yearned for. Renée wanted more time with her beloved family. More time writing fiction. More time making stuff. More time talking and laughing and sharing. More time with her shoes off and her feet feeling the earth.
Renée really hated wearing shoes.
She was forty-five years old when she died.
How inconsiderate of death to be so close when Renée was just beginning to reframe her life. And isn’t this the hard truth of it … that death is always right here - announcing itself in the midst of life - reminding us that our earthly existence has an indelible use-by-date. In the west we don’t tend to pay much attention to the shared reality of life and death in the daily drama of our existence. Culturally we don’t practice getting more comfortable with any kind of change – big or small. Instead, we can grip and grasp at familiar objects and experiences that soothe and delight, while avoiding what feels awkward, painful, scary and unknown.
Practicing Letting Go
In the eastern tradition, we’re offered daily ways to acknowledge this inevitable cycle of creation and dissolution. Every day is seen as a deliberate turning towards light and activity in the world; every night is its own sweet surrender to the dark and stillness as our awareness turns inwards. And then if we’re blessed with another day, the sun rises again.
The light and warmth of summer moves inexorably toward the cool and dark of winter. And then if we’re blessed with another season, the warmth of spring enlivens us.
Change is available to us in every breath cycle; each inhale an affirmation and celebration of our existence, a big resounding YES to this unique body and this unique life. Every exhale is its own small and radical surrender of the finite body and life to what some might call God or consciousness or source or the Divine - words inadequate placeholders for the infinite and intimate essence of what we are.
STEVE JOBS said that ‘… death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.’
What are you letting go of?
What are you welcoming in?
What new learning and experiences have you been putting off, waiting for the time to be right, for the bank account to be different, for you to be willing to step outside your comfort zone? How might you practice getting friendlier with change? Intimate even. How might you learn to be more comfortable with endings so that you can really - truly - madly - deeply live?
Renée had a huge heart, fire in her belly, and a brain as big as a planet. She died suddenly during a pottery class, with her hands in the clay. I find it comforting that Renée was blissfully creating her art when death padded unexpectedly towards her. If she were still alive, Renée would urge you to move towards your deep desires. She would spin you to face whatever and whoever is calling to you. ‘Say Yes,’ she would say. YES.
While we’d been working together, Renée had been much moved by Mary Oliver’s beautiful poem The Summer Day, with its powerful call-to-action in the last verse.
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Tat tvam asi. You are That.