Satori in Starbucks

I do think about, worry about, ruminate upon, quite simply, mortality. My line of work entails ministering to the dying and the close proximity to those standing on the verge of moving on, as it were, has effected me deeply. Not so much in how I conduct my life or in my hopes for the future, but in how I succeeded in stumbling through most of my youth completely blind. That we are here and some day won't be is everything. At the end of the day, that's it. We all fill our lives with stuff and activity, some of us becoming billionnaires along the way, some of us struggling day to day and still some of us trying to sit still long enough that the ultimate truth might seep through the chatter.

What gets to me is how enlightened I used to believe I was. I was always aware of my spiritual struggle but often believed that my eyes were in fact open to seeing the truth. The truth took on a lot of forms but through it all, I felt like my success and status in life were somehow divinely inevitable: Wherever my quest for truth led me, in the meantime I would chance to lead a charmed life with dreams fulfilled along the way and with every step.

Whether my eyes are open now doesn't even matter. What is true is that I view the world and myself differently. My hope is that in twenty years I'll look back at this and with the wisdom of my years guiding me, realize I still didn't have a clue. The more I learn the less I know.

I watch my patients take every breath, some at peace, some expressing fear, and some angry with the whole fucking process. Peaceful or fearful, each anticipating glory, nothingness, or both. I find myself leaning to the belief that what comes after death does not matter. Our willingness to be there for others, to help and to comfort, to be a witness to their lives is paramount. To be able to proclaim "Because I am, I know you are."