The feeling of leaving

In reading and thinking about death, there seems to be one uniform concurrence: the feeling leaving gives you extreme clarity about what really matters. That's mostly because you're emotionally detached from everything; you're leaving anyway, so why bother yourself with what isn't going to matter.

There's two things going on here: that we know what really matters and that it becomes clear when you're detached.

There is practical application to that: you are "leaving" at any point in life when you are alive - and I mean death.

I was leaving to come to bombay about 6 months ago - after I'd spend 5 years in one of the greates cities in the world - Boston. During the last few weeks it hit me that I'm really going to be gone - and quite a few remarkable things happened during those few weeks. Some of them:

• I didn't want to waste my time thinking about things that went wrong
• I spent time with myself, and of course the people I really cared about
• I stopped thinking about what other people thought of me or the things i did
• i was genuinely happy, and i smiled and was only good to people (or thats what I think)

All of these are just a few things about how I really felt. I wanted to spend more time by myself, exploring things alone and just sitting and looking at people and everything around me. It was truly one of the best feelings i have ever felt. There was very little place for hate or attachment - there was only enjoying the moment, and it was in that moment that a lot became clear.

Now bringing the topic back to "death" - This experience was similar in that it represented the end of my time in Boston (for that time) - and a lot of experiences in our lives our like that. The vacations we take is one example. Life can be quite like our time spent in places, and the end of those vacations would represent, well, the end of that life. In what many great thinkers have said and from my own experience: If we were to live our life like a vacation, detached, knowing that now is all that there is before the end of our life takes us to an eternity of contentedness, is a great way to live. That is the practical application of death.

It is true, ofcourse, that Human Beings cannot just live detached all the time - specially when it comes to business, money, family and so on - because these are what keep us going. This detachment however is not to be confused with the anti-desire. You can desire all and yet be detached with the outcome. That is the impractical application of living like we're dying. But as far as I know - there is no other way to live effectively.

PS. I try not to use death because of the obvious negative connotations that we have with it - but it's important to realize that death is our only incentive to really "live"
--Tarun Betala | +91 897 656 1640 | BBPin 251ED1FC