Do you feel like if you died right now, you would have no regrets?
I've been thinking about this for a while. It's hard to think about dying without triggering the survival instinct or the thought of my loved ones suffering. However, as I was watching a TV series today, I decided to pause it during one scene and think about the topic.
I realised that apart from the things that I mentioned, I have already achieved a lot in my life. It's not "a lot" as in "cured cancer" or anything similar. I've just learned a few languages, I overcame the blockades that made me unsatisfied and I have become a version of what I always wanted to be.
When I look at my ambitions, I realise that they're just the amplification of what I currently have. I can't describe my past desires and accomplishments without revealing too much about me, but I can say that they are simple developments of myself, my nature, my abilities and my way of perceiving the world.
I've noticed that I have something that buddhists look for. I am in peace with existence and with myself, which are ultimately the same thing. I could die right now and I would not mind it that much. I mean, I do have some things I want to do, like eat ice cream or finish watching my TV series, but they're just earthly desires that are not necessary. I don't have any hard link to them and could give them up easily.
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I believe, perhaps in my ignorance I don't know, that you can only live life well after you don't fear losing it. If you cling to life you will stop doing things that you want to do simply for fear of losing it, and worse, you would be willing to do things that you don't want to do simply to maintain it.
Only when you accept death can you be sure to live as you want to live, and if you want to live forever, you will make that life, sometimes more sometimes less, miserable.
I want to live forever, but at the same time I know I won't, so I don't mind the vicissitudes of fate. Like a stone on the shore, one day I will wear out and that will be it.
Would you really, really, like to live forever? Because it is very easy to say "forever", but it is more than usually thought.
Forever are not 10 years more, or 100 years more, not 1,000 years more, not 10,000 years more, not 100,000 years, not 1,000,000 years, but thousands and thousands and thousands, and millions and millions and millions, and hundreds of billions of years.
It seems long enough for everything you do to lose all meaning or purpose.
I personally cannot with so much time, and if you think about it, to fear death is simply to fear the unknown, because we really don't know anything about it. To want to live forever is to fear death to some degree, and to refuse to experience something of which we will never know if we live forever.
I think about death a lot. And yeah, I mean that both ways. I have wanted to die hundreds of times before, and I also think about death as an entity in itself. What it entails, what it means for others, and ultimately what it means for me.
Since I become very attached to things, death scares me because it is an ending of a cycle, of a life. It means I no longer have what I used to have, and using this definition, I guess you could say I have died a thousand deaths over and over again during this lifetime. Each time being equally scary. But death also fascinates me for this same reason; it is the ending of a cycle, it means that something has finished, there is freedom and a space that wasn't there before. It's liberating.
To answer your question, I guess I could say yes and no. I still have things I want to do, places to visit and people to see again, but at the same time it is all fleeting and not really all that important, so if death decides to visit... I guess I would go gladly.
Thousands of deaths.
When you talked about the cycle, you reminded me of something. I remember that when I was maybe like 12, I wrote that on a sheet of paper. "Death is the end of the cycle" or somethign like that. A teacher got really worried for me. I was just philosophising, didn't really mean to alarm anyone.
I think your thoughts about death are very similar to mine. I can't add much or refute you. It's hard to think about death like this when the whole of society is screaming "dying is bad!" and mourning and praying for those who leave us.
The wind blows, we die, a bird chirps.