The Beauty of Mortality

"Memento Mori-remember we die"

-old latin proverb

The most preeminent fear of the human condition is the fear of death. The fear of death is a natural predisposition of any organism. It is something all mortal, temporary conscious beings must face and come to terms with at some point. 

Death is natural. In a physical sense it is the consequence and end result of entropy, which decays and breaks down all complex systems.

In a spiritual sense, it is the final consequence of sin and the fall from grace that cursed this world into the tragedy that it is today. 

The fear of death is not always a bad thing. Self preservation is a necessary part of a person's life. It's hard to be productive and responsible if you don't value your life to some degree. However, the fear of death can also be a binding thing. An enslaver and oppressor. Every dark enemy or oppressive force humanity has ever faced has used the terror that the threat of death and destruction bring to subjugate and oppress their targeted group.

Fear of death, in this circumstance, inhibits the ability of people to rise out of subjugation and break their chains of oppression. It's the fear of death that oppresses and enslaves even more so than the people who instill terror and fear to subjugate. If the oppressed don't fear death, than it becomes exceedingly difficult to maintain the oppression. Terror and fear are the great subjugators.

Even with the fear of death component, there is a beauty in mortality. Mortality and death are the only avenues towards a final and complete liberty from the burdens and blights of this world. No one gets out alive, and that's not a bad thing. 

Recognizing your mortality can make you savor the good and wonderful moments of your life and appreciate life to a certain degree more because you are aware of how temporary and fleeting each moment, and your whole life, is.

Remembering your mortality should teach you humility, knowing that you share the same fate as the impoverished or the wealthy, the disenfranchised or the privileged, the sick or the healthy, the weak or the strong. If you recognize your mortality and your vulnerability,  this can aid in a transformation of character that can cause you to be more compassionate and empathetic. 

It's a lot easier to treat people well when you recognise a shared humanity and a shared mortality.

Poor treatment usually results from an inequality, perceived or actual, and a power differential between two people.

The great equalizer of death, in a wise person's mind, should render any sense of superiority obsolete and unjustified, knowing full well that death claims the powerful and the powerless, the oppressed and the oppressor, the slave and the free all the same...and all in due time.

To me, I don't fear death. I fear pain, both my own and the pain I'd cause in others if I died.

Death would be a liberation for me from the lie of this world and its burdens and blights.

I don't fear death, but I value life and the lives of others. That's the "hero recipe." That's what defines a hero.

I would love nothing more than to go home to God and bow before His throne, but he wants me here. In this world.

Even so, if God is infinite and eternal, and his creation is infinite and eternal, than there is a liberty in death that is incomparable to, and greatly exceeds, any liberty in life.

The only way to be immersed completely and totally in God's love, God's glory, and God's infinity is to be liberated from this dying body in this dying world. 

That liberation will come in time.