Everyday I wake up to a new aspect of bodily discomfort. This keeps me on my toes. I do what I can to ease my body from becoming too stiff or set. It is a battle I constantly lose the benefit of every night. I am just becoming better at applying a more effective balm to smooth the soreness.
Through this is a way of side stepping the truth of bodily decay and decline, that we all do. We make it all appear safely manageable and contained. Then I can pretend it's not really happening. It's not that serious a concern. I'm not in the process of bodily decay, or even approaching dying. Because, I have so many things to do and to make. So long as I can remain productive, how could death even be close?
And this is how our society thinks and behaves in relation to mortality, when all else fails distract yourself. By not wanting any discomfort or mild inconvenience, that we don't already have a salve for, that we can purchase over the counter in a pharmacy, to make it disappear or diminish. There is, however, no medicine for our death, this is the blunt fact of our existential situation.
To an extent I am deluded. I am living and perpetrating a fib. Most delusions we tell ourselves, are fibs that we attempt to convince ourselves are true through repetition. That we can meditate ourselves into being Enlightened, or that reality is perfectible, that some things are permanent and will be eternally with us, that we can have whatever we desire, that oodles of money will bring us happiness. That I will not die for a while yet, is just one of those fibs we perpetrate and perpetuate. We like to cultivate a perception that we have all the time in the world, in which to thwart mortality for that little bit longer. These are the deceitful strategies by which we live.
The extent to which I believe these deceptions varies. I know in theory that I cling to fundamentally incorrect expectations about the extent of my life span. Do I act in a way that demonstrates I've seen through these? Well, no, I do not. Though after the heart attack it has been much harder to maintain the blitheness of my ignorance. It's the sort of fib we unconsciously sustain, even though all the data is now well and truly in. You are gonna die brother.
This is similar to the die hard MAGA supporter, who still believes Trump is sent from God, though it should be patently clear by now he never was any such thing. We cling to our fibs because admitting they are incorrect, will make our fragile ego look truly foolish indeed. Likewise, we may go to our deaths still trying to convince ourselves that this is just a little chest pain, that will soon go away. We shall all feel foolish when the moment of death arrives.
Taken from my Study Journal for April 18th & 19th, that has been edited and further adapted.
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