Oh boy. Here it comes. That moment you’ve been avoiding your entire life. You’re watching the heart monitor from your hospital bed. You’re staring down the headlights of a tractor-trailer. You took too much. You worked too hard. You lived too long, and now it’s time to die. Well maybe not just yet, but imagine how you might feel in your last living moment. Are you relieved that the weight of the world is about to become irrelevant? Are you worried that you haven’t accomplished enough? Are you expectant of what comes next? Are you scared? There are several ways to approach death but unfortunately we don’t (think) we get to choose how to face our own. That last thought will come as automatically as the rest, the result of a lifetime of conditioning. So why not take a moment to consider how we are teaching ourselves to die? 

Let’s start with the funeral, a colorless classroom where we learn firsthand how society regards the ending of life. If you’ve never been to one, don’t worry! I hear they get more popular with age. The typical American funeral is a very counterintuitive affair. People gather to reflect fondly on the life of a recently departed friend or family member. They dress nicely. They tell heartfelt, intimate stories. Sometimes there are even refreshments afterwards. Sounds like a good time right? And it certainly could be if everyone attending weren’t already convinced that to be happy at a funeral is tantamount to celebrating Hitler’s birthday. And rightly so! Try going to a funeral holding a Cheshire grin and see what happens. If you aren’t escorted out in handcuffs you will at least be considered a lunatic by everyone in attendance. Despite the popular assertion that funerals serve as a celebration of past life they are much more often a place to publically grieve. A chance to dress in the blackest clothes you own. A chance to cry your eyes out or at least be remarkably uncomfortable. Of course there is nothing wrong with grief. It is a natural response to loss. But to standardize such a dreary event in its name is to assert that one’s death and another’s sorrow necessarily co-occur. Whether we acknowledge it or not this assertion encourages us to regard death as a reprehensible disservice to the world, something we must avoid at all costs if we are to protect those we love from the pangs of mourning.
 
But we can only learn so much from funerals because although poignant, they are very occasional. Fortunately mainstream media outlets provide us an everyday teaching on death. You’d be hard-pressed to watch the news for more than five minutes without encountering a story about the latest tragedy: a school shooting, a well-aimed missile overseas, a recent celebrity suicide, you know the stuff. These stories are so pervasive that they become an expected topic of conversation. Maybe we should be grateful for this never-ending stream of deathly education, but what does it really teach us? Do we have anything to gain from the constant depiction of tragedy in the world? Are such events necessarily tragedies or simply happenings whose interpretation can be left up to us? Well certainly not any more. We don’t get the chance to decide for ourselves because sorrow is portrayed as the requisite response to death. All that’s left for us is to spread the word: “Hey everybody! Somebody’s died! Better put on our somber sombreros and start telling the world!” We can all rest assured that the media well will never run dry of gruesome stories for us to imbibe. Not until we stop guzzling and regurgitating them in every direction. In doing so we learn to regard death as an emetic, an everyday occasion to wallow in our own sick.
 
Thankfully there is another class on death we will all inevitably attend, one with a slightly more hands-on approach. Of course I am referring to the process of own dying. Try as we might the day will come when the body decides to take its last breath, and despite a world of influence telling us how to regard our own departure, we must decide for ourselves how to face it. We can choose to buy into its personification, to face the funereal grim reaper in fear and remorse. Or we can choose to reject society’s notions in favor of our own experience and venture into the great beyond without the baggage of conditioned belief. Remember, there was a time when we did not exist of this world, and to that state we shall inevitably return. In the mean time may we disregard our society’s abysmal instruction and learn to embrace our own cessation for what is truly is: an unimaginable homecoming.

-Michael

 

If you have ever lived in city with public trains you are no doubt familiar with the beggar’s speech: A bum comes aboard and loudly exclaims something along the lines of “Excuse me ladies and gentleman!” and then proceeds to justify why he (or she) deserves your money. Everybody looks down. We all know the drill. Just let the guy give his speech. Maybe give him a buck. He’ll move on to the next car soon enough. Then you can go back about your business and let go of that wretched feeling in your gut.
 
A few days ago a middle-aged man went from perfectly healthy to horridly disfigured in an instant, the casualty of a terrible accident. Naturally he was taken to a hospital where he received treatment for his injuries. Of course a doctor cannot turn someone away who would otherwise be dead in a few hours, regardless of his insurance status. But death isn’t always the worst case scenario. This man received the absolute minimum care necessary for his survival and was then recast into the world a newborn cripple. No job. No money. No family. No functional body. No support system of any kind. To him death might seem a welcome deliverance.
 
It was this man who boarded my train yesterday to give his beggar’s speech. He was not high or deranged. He was, however, severely injured and in desperate need of assistance. He could barely walk with a rickety crutch under his right arm. The left was casted and slung, its wrist gnarled beyond repair. What teeth he had left jutted crookedly into his lips and his skin was badly burned. He genuinely needed assistance and decided to swallow his pride and reach for a helping hand. In doing so he gave a train car full of strangers the chance to exercise mindfulness and compassion. He gave us an invaluable gift, the opportunity to reflect on our own relationship with the suffering of others.
 
When his speech began first I looked to the floor. Then into his piteous eyes. Then around at my fellow passengers. A few people noisily continued their own conversations, completely disregarding this desperate man’s plea for help. Others stared silently at their cell phones, clearly too distracted or disturbed to give their full attention. Thankfully some did offer him the generosity of spare change. But regardless of how anyone outwardly reacted to this man’s history we all felt uncomfortable. Everyone wanted this beggar’s speech to be over before it even began.
 
That we have this immediate retching in response to the poverty of others is telling. We know something is terribly wrong with our world. People endure hardships beyond the purview of our own plenteous existence, and we choose to ignore them. We do not disregard them for lack of empathy but because poverty is ubiquitous, an unsolvable problem in a world where success is measured in dollars and personal wealth is achieved through competition rather than cooperation. Our gut feelings evidence that we all suffer at the hands of poverty, but society implores us to stay the course. To eat first and give second if at all. To believe that somehow our dream is separate from another's nightmare. We must reconnect with our gut, our intuition, the truest guide in a world wrought with agenda. We must conscientiously examine the state of our society, pay attention to our feelings, and act on them. Only then will we recognize that the border separating us from the impoverished is only a comforting illusion. Only then will we begin to recover from the pandemic of indifference.  

-Michael

 

What does the phrase ‘nine to five’ mean to you? After a bit of cerebral time traveling I realized that my own interpretation of those three words has changed quite a bit over the years. When I was a child they were just meaningless grownup jabber. Later I discovered that those grownups were referring to the prototypical workday.  By the time I finished college nine to five had somehow transformed into a covetable treasure, the object with which I might finally attain the virtues of adulthood. Now two years into my own nine to five that once lustrous emblem of maturity has again mutated, this time into the oppressive bars of a professional’s prison. Thankfully I sense the beginnings of yet another transformation, though into what I am uncertain. Perhaps an investigation of nine to five’s past metamorphoses will help me to predict its future.
 
When did I become so obsessed with the forty hour work week? My childhood self never wanted a job. He was much more interested in playing with toys and experimenting in the world without the burdens of adult obligation. But then he discovered that grownups have access to a sort of expendable superpower (and what child doesn’t want a superpower?). Of course I am referring to money. Save up enough and you can manifest anything you desire. And under constant barrage of colorful advertisements I was convinced I would never run dry of want. Without my knowing it the governing motivation of my life was quietly turning from exploration into monetary wealth. I learned to regard ‘nine to five’ as the workday, the source of grownup wizardry, the means through which I too could inherit the capacity for material manifestation.
 
So I started working towards my own nine to five. I opened a savings account and got summer jobs. Then I went to college to learn firsthand of the cardinal objective that is employment. I heard non-stop chatter about a dire job market. I attended career fairs offering enticing salaries and impressive benefits. I enviously watched my peers celebrate the acquisition their own nine to fives and was seized by a sense of urgency, one that reinvented my notions of wealth and personal success as one and the same. Nine to five was the credential I needed to prove I was on track, that I wasn’t just another Millennial destined for his parents’ basement. So when I did eventually find my own nine to five of course I felt tremendous relief. I had acquired the salary with which I could finally be considered a respectable member of society. Little did I know that my splendid prize would eventually turn on me.
 
The beginning of my full-time employment was agreeable enough. I learned exciting new skills. I met impressive people. And, most importantly, I got paid. Unfortunately over of the next two years my youthful zeal rapidly degraded into lethargy. A salary wasn’t bringing me the happiness I had anticipated, nor were the ‘freedoms’ it afforded me. In fact, it seemed to be doing the opposite. I stopped pursuing profitless creative endeavors. I stopped reading books and meditating. I used this ‘career’ as an excuse to discontinue my own personal growth as if at the ripe old age of 24 I had somehow concluded my own spirit’s unfolding. All that was left was to walk the beaten trail, to grudgingly resign myself to a lifetime of labor. Unfortunately it is from within this resignation that I am currently writing. Something terrible has happened to the once lustrous ‘nine to five’ I took a quarter of a lifetime to obtain. Every day I watch the clock like it’s a gatekeeper, hoping against reason he decides to move his hands just a little faster towards the hour that is my freedom. But let’s put aside melodramatic symbolism for a moment and address the stated purpose of this treatise: to predict my nine to five’s next transformation.
 
‘Nine to five’ has revealed its progression as parabolic. What began in the mire of undefined words grew upwards into the concept of the workday.  From there it continued towards its apex, eventually arriving as the very definition of personal fulfillment. Then, proving unable to meet my absurd expectations it slipped downwards again, this time manifesting itself as the metaphorical prison in which I am currently detained. Therefore I predict nine to five will continue its descent, return into the abstract and in doing so free me from the constraints of societal convention. Born into this world a meaningless phrase ‘nine to five’ shall inevitably return into my conceptual repository an irrelevant expression, a shadow whose imaginary substance I have endorsed for far too long. That we must follow in the footsteps of the moneyed is an inveterate lie we tell ourselves to exchange passion for a paycheck. That material wealth somehow equates happiness is a dangerous distortion of an unpleasant truth: that our society regards profit as more important than its inhabitants’ fulfillment. Thankfully we individuals possess the invaluable ability to look inwards, identify our own delusions, and adjust accordingly. In this way we are all blessed, and I for one choose to never again disregard such vital providence.

-Michael

(written in November 2015)