what if we planned for the last 7 days of our lives?... and also the 7 days after that?
03 Jun 2018back at evolutionary leadership (s/o c/o 2017!!!), gibrán introduced us to the death meditation. the way he lead it for us was a guided meditation through the last year (i think?) of our lives. it was super powerful.
lately i’ve been thinking about the things we (americans) generally avoid and how those avoidances show up in our lives. and really i’m thinking about big picture ways. like, consumption is often avoidance of the reality that we will die one day and we’re, at best, not sure if we can take anything with us… or if there is even anything left of us after our hearts stop beating that would even be able to understand taking something.
avoidance of death is a huge issue for american society (imo) and i’m very interested in shifting that. one idea i had was to extend the death meditation. what if it was the last 24h of life and the next 24h of life for your community. what would i like my last 24h to look like?
or, now that i’m typing it out, what would i want the last week of my life and then the next week of everyone elses lives to look like? what would i want my winddown to look like? what would i want in terms of people around me? and, the most interesting question to me right now… what would my funeral look like? would it be sad? would it be a party? a vogue ball? a poetry reading on the beach? would it be a sci-fi workshop?
my imagination of what funerals can be is so limited.
let’s shake it up, shall we?
ps - maybe it’d be nice to do this annually so that in case i die this year, my folks (friends, family of origin, chosen family) all have a guide for what to do. it’s so crazy to me that people fight over how to handle the post-life realities of other people. this seems like an easily solvable problem.
words / writing / post-processing
296w / 7min / 5min