eat the banana. Then once she’s gone droopy, you’ll wrap her in a blanket and ring me with this mobile phone.
[Hands Mathew a mobile phone.]
| DRABBLE: | We’ll rendezvous at my car. Then I’ll take her to a traditional mental hospital where a quiet room with a one-foot-thick steel door has been reserved for her. With time and support she’ll soon see sense, and we’ll both be able to return to our normal lives. I will once more be a rising star of the world of psychiatry, and you can go back to your idyllic life of collecting bi-valves from the beach. Albeit with an understandable mistrust of therapists. |
OPTIONS
Before casting a die, read through the six options below. Throw out one or two (or, better still, all six) and create some of your own to replace those you toss out. Then cast a die.
1 Burp or fart during your boss’s next talk. Look at him or her with intense seriousness, as if the burp or fart never existed.
2 At your next group meeting – at work, at church, at a bar with buddies, at a coffee klatch, in the locker room – consider some far-out and seemingly irrational idea that has some some of appeal; for example, that the whole group repair to a new meeting ground: a bar, lake, nightclub, etc. Or that the group dispense with its usual bullshit and talk today only about ‘X’, something you sense people might like to talk about but never do. Or suggest that whoever is leading the meeting be replaced by someone else. Present your suggestion seriously (but don’t you yourself take it seriously). Note the results.
3 Enter the next group meeting you attend – at work, church, bar, kitchen, living room, bowling alley, wherever – with the assumption that you are attending not a meeting but a party, and that the purpose of a party is to have fun. Have fun. We’d advise you try to encourage others to have fun, but fear that then you’d become a party pooper.
4 Lecture someone about how seriousness is sickness and ruins people’s lives. Notice immediately how your serious lecture dulls both your life and that of the person who has to listen to you.
5 With children, play. Encourage them to be inconsistent. Encourage them to pretend. Encourage them to make up stories (to lie). Encourage them to pretend to be someone different from their normal selves. Encourage yourself to join them in their games. Unless you become as a little child you shall not see God.
6 The next time you pay a bill, send at least 10 per cent more than the total amount of the bill. Tell the recipient that they are doing such great work (no matter what you really think of them) you wanted to send them extra. Note if their computer system faints.
When life comes, it cannot be declined; when death greets you, his handshake is for ever.
THE COMPLETE BOOK OF ZEN I
The raindrop races with hesitation down the windowpane, stops, merges with the other victors in the race and, in an hour or two, ascends once more to the sky.
It is a full life.
‘The trouble with Death,’ said Whim one day, ‘is that it takes up a lot of time.’
Life without death would be, paradoxically, life without life.
For living is change, is growth and decay, is birth and death. Death is another form of change. We tend to see it as an end, as changeless-ness, and fear it, but only because we believe our consciousness ends with the decay of our body. But if consciousness lives at all then it, like all other forms of life we know of, must go on, changing, decaying, being reborn.
Death is also changless-ness. It is a paradox that humans, who seem to organize their lives to control and limit change, should fear the ultimate security of death. Once dead we have nothing more to fear. Perhaps that is the reason why most people who have a near-death experience find life much lighter afterwards. It’s as if they have taken the best punch the enemy has to offer and realize it isn’t so bad after all.
ON DEATH
A leaf, quite thick-veined, brittle, dry, Weakened by the chill of winter’s breath, Loses its grip on the trembling limb so high And falls to the frozen earth, and death.
I step on it.
Do you hear it cry?
The fear of death is healthy on the one hand and an illness on the other. When a train is bearing down on you, it is usually wise to step off the tracks. Death is the end of the play, the end of playing, the end of games. It’s lights out on the playing fields of the Lord. If we enjoy playing, then we want to keep the game going.
We grieve when a loved one leaves us at the height of his or her powers. But when a loved one leaves us who has long declined and is now capable of only the most repetitious of games, should we grieve? Or should we celebrate the passing by remembering and celebrating the life that went before?
Life can be seen as a continual expanding of options beginning at birth and expanding into and through adulthood and then beginning to diminish as we age. Aging is a narrowing of life, a narrowing of the things we can do, a narrowing of our ability to see things freshly. Illness is a further narrowing. Finally, with death, we narrow our existence to one simple option: rest. Eternal rest. Not bad. But not as much fun as change.
TWO PARABLES ABOUT WHIM AND DEATH
One day a disciple asked Whim: ‘If a man suddenly appeared here with a gun and pointed it right at you and threatened to shoot, what would you do?’
‘I’d run,’ replied Whim promptly.
‘But then what would all your disciples think?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Whim. ‘But I’m interested in surviving to find out.’
The next day Our Beloved Whim was talking with a group of disciples in a large tent when a man suddenly appeared in their midst and, aiming a shotgun at Whim, announced loudly: ‘You claim that death isn’t something to be feared. Convince me you’re not afraid and I won’t shoot.’
Whim leapt up and ran out of the tent, leaving the man and the disciples open-mouthed in astonishment. Before anyone could say a word, Whim walked back into the tent and sat down.
The man with the shotgun, baffled, let his gun fall to the floor and waited uncertainly. The disciples, after a respectful silence, burst into long applause.
After another long silence the foremost disciple asked: ‘Teach us, O Most Beloved Whim. Why did you run away?’
‘I was afraid,’ said Whim.
‘But then why, O Master, did you return?’
‘To see if any of you guys got hurt.’
Disability is limitation. Illness is limitation. Aging is limitation. And death is the ultimate limitation. One is capable only of stinking.
So we properly seek to avoid it.
Yet about nothing are most societies more hypocritical and filled with damaging illusions than about death. All societies create rituals and expected behaviour patterns around someone’s death and expect everyone involved to follow them. In most ways we are expected to treat the death of an eighty-year-old loved one the same as that of a twenty-year-old. We are expected to treat the death of a mean alcoholic the same as that of a kindly grandmother. Society insists on the same rituals and grieving for each.
There are some people’s deaths we feel like