Read this Note if I Die Tomorrow

If I have died…please remember that my dog still needs a home. He also likes tummy-rubs. He’s clean right now, we gave him a bath just last week, so don’t be afraid to dig right in and give him a good scratch where he likes it (near his left front arm and a bit lower than that).

If you can, tell my friends that I always cherished their company, even if sometimes my expression didn’t show it. They know I’m not the most out-going girl, they loved me despite my flaws, but just tell them again, just so I have some peace of mind.

Oh, and if you can, give my diaries to a girl who really needs them. I usually never wanted anyone to read my personal thoughts, but I think I learned quite a bit these past few years of being alive. Maybe reading them will inspire her to be confident in herself, and to never straddle her self-worth on a boy who’s growing up himself.

Please sell all my stuff and send the money to charity. None of the items I possessed have any real value themselves, if you remove me from the equation of course.

I am dead, so my words have achieved saint-status, and I have advice for you– please live your life the way you want to. Find your definition of success and follow it. I mean, I know there will be days when you hate living, but just remember that there are good things about where you are right now. Please be happy you have time. Please be grateful you aren’t me.

A Teenager’s Fear of Death and of Dying

I think I have a disease.

Realizing that my disease, or whatever this is, is going to change the way I live life from the moment I discovered I may have it, made me realize that I too, despite my earlier belief, have an idea of what life “should” be. I want myself to have a perfect life, with minimal failure and minimal sadness. It scares me that the future does not guarantee my dreamed life. My disease is even making it reality.

I read stories about people losing their family members in freak accidents and of people having to put down their old dogs after they cannot live any longer today. The truth is, there is absolutely nothing keeping these realities from becoming my own. My dog will get old one day. My parents could get into a car accident. It makes me very scared.

I want to do anything in my power to prevent the scary future possibilities from ever coming true. But I know my attempts will be futile, because everyone tries, and at least once in their lives, everyone fails.

I haven’t gotten to that point in my life when I can write about losing someone close to me. I have yet to experience permanent loss, and I am not going to lie and say I’m not scared. Because I am. But I am also awake.

I don’t know whether to be happy that I am aware of the impermanence of life, of the impermanence of everything I hold so dearly. I am aware that we cling too hard on the continued existence of our loved ones. At certain moments, I question why I have ever been kind to anyone, why I have let anyone depend on me, if it is true that I will die one day and leave them all to suffer. It isn’t as sad for the person who has died than it is for the people who have lost. The ones left behind after a death must try to salvage what remains of their lives and keep moving on.

I read this quote today, when I was thinking about all this. Janine Shepherd said in her TED talk,”It wasn’t until I let go of the life I thought I should have that I was able to embrace the life that was waiting for me.” The life I should have doesn’t include loss, or suffering or discomfort. The life I will have is not even close to the one I want, but that doesn’t mean it is nothing, that it is bereft of meaning if it isn’t perfect. A life is a life and it should be lived, no matter what experiences it makes a person go through.

All of this is easier said than done. But after writing, and thinking deeply about all of this, I think I am happy that I am aware, but also okay with the sadness that inevitably comes with it.

Ticking of Your Clock

We notice the big changes. Moving countries, leaving school, getting a disease, death, birth. We notice only the big changes and they knock us off our feet.

What if we noticed every change?

No change would make us question the “stability” in our lives, because we’d know there is no “stability”, there is only our minds.

We lose dying cells all the time. After a few years, every organ in your body will have been replaced by a new one. Some neural connections are lost ever minute while new ones are formed. Stimuli in the environment is constantly changing.

We don’t look so closely.

What if we did?

The future is probabilistic, the past is set in stone. The only thing we have is right now. The only thing you have is your breath. It is your count, the sand in your hourglass, the ticking of your clock.
Breathe in and breathe out. Be grateful for your breath.

It’s the only thing you can ever have for sure.

Goodbyes

Tomorrow brings the end to my life in India.
There’s this pervading sense of unfairness when it comes to goodbyes. Why are they so tough? Why are we designed to hurt so much when they happen? Why do they happen so frequently?
There was this man who died in an Italian restaurant after being bit by a poisonous spider. He didn’t get a chance to say his difficult goodbyes or to contemplate his death.
When I say goodbye to India today, I’m going to feel bad and ask “why me and why now?” or “can’t I have a little while longer?”. That’s how we see our lives, we assume we deserve long stretches of times and people to develop relationships with. The truth is we really don’t and I’m just lucky I have both.
So yes, goodbyes are tough, but I am grateful I get the time to say them.

 

And Life Goes On…

My exams ended today.

I’m still trying to let that sink in. I had imagined today to be wordlessly wonderful and surreal, but then I actually got here.

I had finished my biology paper way before time, so I was just sitting quietly and as comfortably as you can on a wooden chair made for a Kindergardener’s butt. My eyes drooped, one of them was swollen due to all the sleep I had deprived myself of. A human being who ordinarily requires a minimum of 9 hours had been living on 5 hours of sleep every night and it truly was not a pretty sight. I just sat and waited. I should have been heaving sighs of relief, FREEDOM FINALLY from the oppression of school, but all I could really do was put my head down and wait.

You might expect yourself to be irreparably heartbroken, to be unmeasurably happy, but when you get there, you’re none of those things, and life, life goes on.

I wasn’t jumping up and down like I had expected to. I wasn’t laughing uncontrollably like I had imagined. And then it dawned on me how fallible my imagination was, and how feeble a grasp I had on reality, how feeble our grasp on it usually is. But then, right there, during my super deep philosophical musings, the cool March breeze swept pass me. That breeze was the happiest I had felt all day, well apart from the morning I had spent breathing in the morning air and listening to birds chirp. Admittedly, I had been in a hurry to complete my syllabus, and I couldn’t even imagine how the test would go. Sure the calm I felt that morning had been fleeting, but aren’t all moments of happiness just that? Fleeting. No one lives a movie for god’s sake.

And then it hit me again! I had been waiting and waiting for the perfect time to be happy, you know, after my exams. But there I was not feeling any happier than average. I thought back to all the stressed out nights, the pacing across my room, the sleep deprivation. “Aren’t you glad you don’t have to go through that anymore? Come on! The agony…”
But along with all those nightmare-inducing memories, I remembered recording the sound of rain, of smelling the aroma of my green tea before I drank it, of walking Leo with my sister, of those cool, wet, windy nights just laughing. I thought of late night conversations and shared study sessions, of bringing my book out to the balcony and letting the sun warm my skin. All of those moments had occurred during a time I had never expected to be anything close to “happy.”

It’s so obvious, isn’t it? We’re all going to estimate our future happiness incorrectly. And we’re always, always, always going to have a choice to be happy, because even in the middle of Hell, you have the option of smiling.

And life goes on, it always goes on.