The utmost vulnerability. The thing that makes us tremble the most. Isn't that the knowledge of our own mortality? The inescapable death of us and everyone we love. For a long time I thought I had no fear of death what so ever. Until I had kids. Then I realized All I had done was to numb myself and pretend this absence of contacr with my thoughts and feelings was absence of fear.
And in my work as a psychologist I have learnt another thing about death:
When life hands us experiences in which we have to face our mortality, we often come in contact with great things. These close encounters with death make values fall into place, we suddenly have the courage to do things we have feared doing sometimes most of our life, we make insights about deeper, unknown, surprising or very wellknown but forgotten/pushed aside aspects of ourselves. What scares us most can give us courage, knowledge, harmony, joy, acceptance - all this good stuff.
Apart from this being interestingly paradoxical it should probably make us wonder how it might be possible to gain access to all of this without almost dying first. We all know this - lots of people have written about it and spoken about it. It's by no means news... But then what? How do we turn the knowledge into a hands on real positive force in our life?
isn't it so that "death" can be a source of comfort? in moments of great pain the notion of an ending may be soothing. for some of us the inevitableness of death may be the skin we use to desensitize ourselves/confront our fears or simply excuse ourselves from it all. because when death comes around, nothing else really matters, and if that's your mindset, then you need not feel exposed: "it's all going to end anyway".
SvaraRaderavery interesting project!
/s