Reflecting on Death

My colleague, who was a close and true friend of mine, died a month ago. She was 61, full of life and energy, optimistic and open-minded. She went to gym regularly and led a fairly healthy diet. She was the last person anybody would think to fall fatally ill and die. But she did. In 4 months she was gone. People started to ask how it was possible for a person like her to suffer such an unworthy death? Did she do something wrong? Doctors say that “live a balanced, optimistic, active life and eat well, that is the secret of a long, happy life”; is this a false statement? How can this happen to people who really care for themselves? Not that death is itself terrible but the process of how it happened, the tragic suddenness and the suffering that came with it is what bothers me deeply. So it doesn’t really matter how we live, does such an end may happen to anyone? 

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It is a beautiful and profound question, one that goes very deep into the nature of existence.
Of course what I am going to write here is only my experience, and not the absolute truth, whatever that is.

To start with, we are not in charge. Yes, this is obvious, but we often forget. We have the right (and in my own understanding, also the obligation) to take care of ourselves, to live a harmonious healthy life, to take care of our body and our mind. In my understanding we have the obligation because for me our body and our mind are wonderful and beautiful things borrowed from Life, and when you borrow something from somebody (or something) else, you have the obligation to take care of it. 
Now, having said that, how long are we to keep those things we borrowed, is not up to us. 
We can call it destiny, karma, or luck, but whatever we choose to call it, it is not in our power, it is not up to us. Destiny, karma and luck are just a few of the millions of laws that may exist in the cosmos, laws we have no idea that exist. 
Saying ‘to live a balanced, optimistic, active life and eat well is the secret of a long, happy life’ is nice, but is full of ignorance. There are billions of factors that enter into the making of a long and happy life, most of which we have no idea and will never know. 
Life and death are a mystery and to believe that we know anything about them is only ignorance. Or as Socrates used to say: ‘we need to know that we don’t know’. 
But within the little we can know, is the fact that life is a beautiful miracle, one that we need to cherish, appreciate, and care. 

And the way to do that is based on how we live every second of our life, how we relate to ourselves, to other people and to life itself. 
And an aspect of that harmonious living is the knowledge that nothing is permanent, that nothing lasts, and that there are some things that are under my control, like my attitudes – the way I think about things, the way I respond to what happens – and there are things that are not under my control…like everything else. 

The death of your friend, as painful as I am sure it is, is also a reminder about the nature of existence. 
There is more to life than what can be seem or perceived by our senses and mind. Science, art, philosophy and spirituality are different ways to penetrate into the amazingly beautiful mystery of existence. 
We need to make sure that we use well these profound experiences by wasting less time in shallowness and silliness and instead, invest some more of our time in reflecting deeply into these matters and never take them for granted.  

I like very much this quote from Shakespeare – Hamlet:
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy…’