Perhaps there will be time when the future Homo sapiens sapiens could say: I will die the same way as I was born into this world – in dignity. It’s about being respectful to the miracle of life – the mothers and their newborn babies but also respectful to those who are at the end of their lives. From my perspective it is logical: I have spent considerable years of my life informing the public about advantages of natural births, but now that I’m officially retired (I have been a pensioner for some years), the time has come for me to start thinking (and sharing my thoughts) about the opportunity to choose my way to leave this world – at the right time chosen by me and in dignity.
At the same time I’m offering an alternative perspective: recognizing the trap of our own rationality. We have shifted the miracle of life to something requiring a hospital treatment and we degraded the dignified end to life to some sort of pathological problem. As soon as we start thinking about these things differently (and start asking the right questions) we realize that by resolving one problem we will know work out how to resolve all other ones. It’s not about the content of the problem but about the way and approach how to resolve it. It’s not by a coincidence that some of my books are titled Music DIFFERENTLY or Spirituality DIFFERENTLY or Births (and now more to the topic – about Death) DIFFERENTLY.
How would you describe the world around us? Everywhere you look there is a crisis: the economists keep scribbling new budgets, completely oblivious that the true solution lies elsewhere – outside their usual (negative) and limited way of thinking. What about Buddhist Economics? The short lived birth boom has finished and we’re on the way of dying out: and the babies are being born with some emotional, mental or physical damage (look up my article on DDT Births). But the crisis is everywhere; even the teachers, obstetricians or politicians keep going round the same circles: what about Natural Births and School Should be a Game? Note: the bold lettering refers to my previous article on that topic.
Similarly, there is an alternative way to look at dying and death. Based on the statistics of the Ministry of Health and Social Matters (Czech Republic), in 2010, there were around eight thousand pensioners just in Praguewaiting to be placed in care homes. The retirement age is always moving to later age because we „live“ longer. What about Future (Virtue) of Death or differently – as something humane and ecological, and a conscious choice? Every change in life should start with a change in thinking (i.e. looking at things from a different perspective) – and it doesn’t cost a penny: everyone knows that avoiding the problem is more efficient than trying to resolve it after it happens. It is always wise to apply the change and start from the beginning – where else than at the beginning of human life, at birth. We should put in (invest) our best efforts to drive the positive influence on our own evolution – that is the only way to eliminate the damage done to our children, their lives, and in consequence our own lives. Yes, it will take an effort, but it doesn’t have to be a demanding job at all – I’ll go back a loop to what I said above, change the way you think about it, make it a part of your life and you will expect and consider it as normal.
I have thought this through and stated in my previous article Future (Virtue) of Death: I can imagine that in the future (in a non-aggressive and peace loving society – if all goes well!) for the next (at least three?) generations born through natural (orgasmic?) birth even the euthanasia will be considered normal. Moreover, there will be increasing number of those who have completed their purpose in life and consciously decided to live the end of their lives outside of the society – at the point when they’re no longer able to „produce“ and contribute to the society but instead take away the resources by purely being alive… What about this? At the end of one’s fulfilled and happy life, the consciously decided time of death (in the right way) would be considered an honour, a virtue.
The smarter and unbiased of you have probably had a glimpse of thought that a conscious choice of death might unburden the society in terms of health and social issues. The nature itself resolves it in the similar way. The fear of dying and death is a human invention. I’ll say it again: the conscious choice of death (at the right time and in the right way) at the end of a fulfilled and happy life could be considered (again) a virtue…
The ever growing demands of social and health care are showing the trend: we’re hiding the elderly, the ill and the dying in care homes and institutions, and death slowly disappears from our lives. We pushed it into dark corners of „we don’t want to know about it“ place as if we’re trying to avoid it. But everybody dies, nobody can avoid it. The dictate of pharmaceutical (as well as cosmetic/s) industry is reaching new heights: you can now pay for the extra care – starting with paying more for services of expensive obstetrician at expensive hospital, as a pensioner you can pay more for extra services in your care home, and at the end of it all you can pay some more for your own overpriced funeral… The Tibetans have a way to deal with it and incorporate death into their lives – every person over 21 years of age starts preparing himself for his future death as an opportunity to enter the next/higher spiritual level of his own development.
Take as an example: the birth pains are something that is expected to happen to every woman and as such they’re more of a cultural indoctrination. The pain doesn’t have to happen (to such extent or at all!) and birth giving can and should be as orgasmic as the conception itself. Our thinking is manipulated by the historical events thus resulting in fearing the death and dying. A birth is now a hospital matter. The most natural thing in the world is now viewed as something that requires a surgery, as more and more mothers-to-be are choosing a caesarean section (they’re too posh to push), they’re doped up with powerful chemicals (epidural injection, artificial oxytocine), and so on. Unfortunately, the way we leave this world isn’t much different – suffering, in blood, pain and tears. When did we accept this as normality? Suffering and dying from diseases that can’t be cured only treated…prolonging life to the day when our exhausted bodies and minds finally give up. It is not a quality life. The doctors consider the principle of euthanasia merely from the scientific aspect, and never from the spiritual one… but I remain hopeful that one day we will make this change.
I’ve been hinting this for a very long time… when traditional way of thinking doesn’t offer a solution, look for one that’s outside the usual framework (of thinking) – by changing the structure of how we question things… Not „why“ and „what“, but „how“. Then we would be able to look at it from different perspective and consider alternative solutions. But the basic rule of admitting the scale of the problem in order to be able to do something about it, remains universally valid. So let me connect the dots for you: if we as human kind change the way we’re born into this world (the birth will be dignified, joyful and orgasmic) the dying will be the same (dignified and celebratory) but more than that, this exactly will be the way we (human kind) will evolve – and the sky is the limit! Therein lies our potential. In our future, we will all have to be more spiritual – in birth and death, or we will not be at all.
