I could be writing about ensuring one’s legal will has been prepared; or, about the powers of attorney that might be needed. (In case you aren’t in your best mind at the end, someone who is competent may need to give permission to turn off your life support.) I could be writing about planning your funeral (and paying for it, now). You could choose some music and texts for that inevitable day; or, write your own message for those who will gather for your farewell.
Reminding you of these tasks is surely helpful, however, for me, practising A Year to Live primarily means living in such a manner that I am really here on planet earth, in the flow of how things are, now; so that I’m not just a bystander. Like Mary Oliver says in the poem When Death Comes:
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
If I die today, I want to be as ready to leave as I have been to enjoy the day’s wonders; as ready as can be to open to that particular experience, an experience which is no less a ‘being in the flow of life’ than having breakfast. The gospel song asks, Are you ready? We can add, ‘..to be here today.’ “The readiness is all.”
Is it any wonder that when the Zen adept Ikkyu was asked for a calligraphy representing the highest wisdom, he picked up his brush and inked: ‘Attention.’ The no doubt disappointed petitioner said something like, “And that’s it?” So Ikkyu did another one for him: “Attention. Attention.”
In short, today’s imperative is to live such that if death should happen this day, my life would be in harmony with this planet’s touching destiny. It gave birth to aware organisms! That’s awesome. And, practising A Year to Live inspires me that the quality of my life be of some benefit to all life.
Of course, if we live this way, with this kind of attention, of course we do look after our last will and testimony. We look after others. We will get our worldly affairs in order. (Currently, I’m going through a de-cluttering process, which is partly for daily clarity, but also: so that nobody has to do it for me after I die.) All that is good and real. However, how painful it would be, to arrive at death’s threshold and feel like you haven’t lived!
Many people think that living means fulfilling a ‘bucket list’; as though on my deathbed I’ll say, “Oh, yeah. I should have gone to Kathmandu. I should have listened to more opera.” “Oh, shit. I didn’t get to see Old Faithful!”
I can visit those places, of course, and still not be there. I can fulfil my bucket list, but forget to be wake in the ordinary moments of living and loving day to day. It’s much harder, of course, to be awake than to book some tickets. “Oh, yeah. I went to Kathmandu, but I just worried about whether I was doing the right thing, or not.” I think of the tourists (in Theodore Roszak’s Where the Wasteland Ends) disappointed that the geyser Old Faithful hardly lasted long enough for them to get their pictures.
Naturally, to be awake in this world includes encountering, and understanding how our selfishness works. Hence a lot of the exploration in this A Year to Live project investigates how we set up a fictional self. Freedom in life and death is aided by this investigation; because, when unexamined, the conventional, faux mode of being a person (that is, a way of being a person which is based in our self-image) obscures our relationship to both life and death. Our default mode distorts our understanding of this big life process.
Just as a parting irrelevancy: given how much water there is on the planet, and how much the atmosphere matters, who named the planet ‘earth,’ I wonder? What was the reasoning, there? How unexamined is this? Before we die, can we know the nameless planet of which we are? Are we ready for this ‘now’? Mary Oliver writes:
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
– from The Summer Day.