Life as a work of Art

Dealing with cancer over the past 6 months has encouraged me to think about the big questions; what is my purpose in living, how have I impacted the world and the people I love. I think we are born into this world with some instinctual drives - to eat and drink and sleep and to be safe. We are also social animals and need to feel part of a community and to give and share love. Finally, if all of these other needs are mostly fulfilled then we are drawn to seek and create beauty, to learn how the world works so we can predict the near future, and to seek to make the world more just.

One way to think about living is that we are creating our life; actually, we are cocreating it because the actions we take impact the people and the world around us, and so the result of living is the total impact we have had on the world and the ones we have the most impact on are our loved ones. Our impacts on the world continue even when we are gone as people remember our ideas and thoughts and caring, and that affects their own actions and thoughts and feelings.

Seen in this way, death can be thought of as marking the completion of our life, the final brush strokes on a kind of work of art that we have co-created. 

One of my favorite poems that addresses these ideas (at least in my interpretation) is "Peace, my heart" by the 1913 Nobel Laureate in Literature from Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore. I think of this as someone speaking to his loved one(s) at the moment of their death, holding up the lamp of their life to light their loved ones path on their way.  I don't believe there is a life after death, so this notion of life as a gift that we co-create and leave to our loved ones is very appealing to me.

Here is the poem;

Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet.

Let it not be a death but completeness.

Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.

Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.

Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.

Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment and say your last words in silence.

I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way.