We tend to think of birth as a beginning and death as an ending. But I think of them as part of the same circle. The Circle of Life.
We are born, we experience, and then we die. Each is a sacred moment. The beginning of the adventure we call life, the ending—the culmination of that experience, as well as all the living space in between. It is all sacred.
Hopefully there are loving people awaiting our arrival into this world, but we will arrive whether there is a welcoming party or not. Sometimes there is just a push and we enter this world. Other times, hours and hours go by as we struggle to arrive.
The same is true when we leave this world. Hopefully our special people are with us to say goodbye, but they may not be. With fast death, where we are alive one minute and dead the next, there may be no opportunity to say goodbye. With gradual death, caused by disease or old age, there is often time, precious time, for our goodbyes.
Unlike birth, when dying a gradual death, we may have some limited control over the time that we die. We may seem to wait for someone to arrive or leave when no one is there. But we cannot know for certain why death happens at a particular moment. Either way, when it is time, we all will die.
Just as we did not choose the moment we entered this world, we cannot fully control the moment we leave it. What we have is all the living that happens in between.
The Circle of Life. From beginning to end, it is all sacred.
Something more... About the Circle of Life
For more thoughts on living, dying, and what happens as life comes to an end, I share my experiences and teachings in The Final Act of Living. My hope is that understanding the dying process helps us live with less fear.
