About half an hour ago I was spinning with my hands above my head wearing nothing but spandex leggings and a high-visibility vest. The lights from cars on a busy Boston street shone through foggy windows, and the deep beat of dubstep vibrated through my chest and melded with the shouts of a young man, my yoga instructor. Everyone in the room glowed yellow and pink and orange under blacklights, and people's teeth glowed white in broad, joyful smiles.
As the music wound down to a gentler pace and the sounds became less like drums and more like flutes and water, the instructor's voice similarly grew softer---not in weakness but with resolution, such that it filled one with calm. And our fluorescent bodies sank to the ground with our falling heartbeats. A hug of the knees here, a side-stretching twist there, and with the name of the final pose, "Shavasana," I melted into a puddle on my mat. A billion stars could see my teeth as I laughed, and through the ceiling I could see them all laughing along with me. And as I laughed with the stars, and the fifteen other warm bodies in the room heaved with slow, deep breaths beside me, I knew that in that moment I would be content to die.
What a sad and terrible thing to say, you might be thinking. Why should this young person (a man of only 23 small years) be thinking of his death? Why not look forward to better things? Why not live happily instead of dwelling on something so far off?
I will tell you.
Two nights ago, I was at the apartment of a friend I met in yoga class, and he and I smoked a bong, and then we sat in his living room and sunk into the couches like drops of rain in a lake. My friend's roommate, Matt, was there as well, and he was talking about the troubles of the United States and being hopeless about the "state of this nation" and expressing all sorts of anxieties about what might happen in a few years if things continue on their current trajectories. I felt for him, so, in an effort to calm his nerves, I said to him:
"Matt, do you realize that we are all going to die?"
He did not understand what I meant, and he proceeded to talk, for what felt like an hour but might have just been five minutes, about how what I said was a terrible thing to say, and that it implied that there was no meaning in life, no point to living, and that no one could ever be happy while thinking that. I listened from deep inside the couch, and his voice and everything it said were like a door that creaked back and forth in the wind. After the wind died down, I spoke up again.
"I think you misunderstood me." And I explained why the certainty of death, to me, was comfort. I explained why the certainty of death, to me, was freedom. I explained why the certainty of death, to me, was a transcendent happiness that overflowed into every cell of my body and gave life to every single one of my days.
I explained that death, as one of only two known points on the map of life, can help us to take good, solid steps in the present, to take what we need and leave what we cannot carry to the grave...to live a life that matters to you...and that you could be proud of at the end.
I explained that when you stand before an unstoppable equalizer, you forget about the posturing and the groveling and the hierarchies that people create and you just see...
The universe.
(For more information on the universe, visit this page.)
Matt got up and went to bed. I remained deeply enmeshed in the sofa with a smile as broad as my hometown. I was happy that, that night, I had reminded myself of those things that I believed. I was happy that I believed them so well, and that I could hand them to someone and say, these are mine.
In that moment, too, I would have been happy to die.
What are these moments, and why do I bring them up? What is it that makes these moments so blissful? And what is it that makes contentment to die---so wonderful, and so worthy a goal? Why do I say so proudly, at 23 years of age, that I could end it now?
Because with the certainty of death, every moment spent unhappy is a chance to die full of regret.
If death can come at any time---and it can---we simply cannot bank on death postponing its arrival so that we can search for happiness just a little longer.
We need to find it now.
We need to find it now, and live it until that final day.
Where is your happiness? Is it inside you? Or is it somewhere else?
Where is your life leading you?
Where is that place you would be happy to call your grave?
Who is that person you would want buried beside you?
What is that thing you do that you would be happy to die doing?
How long will you wait?
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