Two white swans

Life is painful. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but it is. Life is painful.

But life has an end. It does. I’m sorry again to put it so bluntly, but we do die

When we die, we might feel relief. We might! It would not be wrong to feel relief at the time of our death. We may not feel relief at the time of our death, but if we did, it would not reveal some wrongness about our character. It would be nice to die with relief in our hearts.

And, knowing this, we may feel some relief now, with perhaps many years left before the end of our lives. This life will not last forever. We may feel some relief just in knowing this. It would not be wrong to feel relief at knowing this. It is not a bad way to see things.

Two white swans tread water, delicately moving along the side of a canal littered with human trash. How do they keep their feathers so white living among the rubbish? Knowing that they will die, as they surely do, why do they still preen themselves so meticulously? How does the lotus flower, so beautiful, grow in the mud?

Some say that we should make the most of our lives; that we should squeeze every last drop out of life in order to get what we paid for. But we did not pay for our lives. It was given as a gift. We would not squeeze the grace from the swans, nor the beauty from the lotus flower. So too we should not squeeze the life from our lives.

So do not despair, sweet one. You who sees the swans in their grace not as something to be squeezed, are not wrong in seeing life as painful, not wrong in seeing death as a relief, not wrong in seeing that life is not something to be squeezed.

Please do not turn from this. Do not be persuaded by those who fear death to fear death as they do. Do not be made wrong by those who would squeeze all they can from life, and who ask you to do the same in order to prop up their delusion.

Your way is the right way. Life really is painful. Death really is a relief. I know of nothing more beautiful than to live according to this.

Let me try saying this another way.

As we go through life, we feel pain, and then, eventually, we die. This is a simple truth about life. It is not the only truth about life, but it is one truth.

Most see this truth as morose, but perhaps not you. When you speak, I feel your willingness to feel cold, to feel empty, to feel lonely, to see the rubbish in the canal and not look away. Most look away. And most call those who do not look away by names. Do not waste your precious life in such company.

When you speak, I hear the tender delicacy of one who is hurt and has chosen not to hide. I know it is not easy. God knows it is not easy.

But within the difficulty, and without any hope that it will ease the difficulty, because it won’t, please just know that this direction — the direction of not hiding from the hurt, the direction of atoning to pain and death — is the direction that I, too, have chosen. It is, so far as I can tell, a good direction to take.