I feel as if we have a certain obligation to explore every path in life. As if, unknowingly, we will miss what may have been a vital turn and become lost amidst the chaos. Those of us who have passed on may know now of what is to come, but those us alive have only the certainty of death to rely upon. Knowing this one absolute, we owe it to ourselves to leap off cliffs, run blindly down twisting roads and run full tilt through life with joy in our hearts and mischief in our steps. Once gone, we leave only the love we had behind. Once our very beings cease to be, what we were lives echoed through those who knew us, loved us and laughed with us. The concept of death is so abstract, so surreal and devastating in its finality. We, who were at a time so entirely real, so completely tangible, with heartbeats and breath, will be gone. One moment here and true, the next a memory and a tear. This reality of grief pulls at my heart, like the ache I sometimes feel for those friends I have said goodbye to on windy mountaintops among lighting and heavy, somber energy. I feel it in some tragic way for myself. I can pull back and see myself as this soul who has so many dreams, so many plans and so much optimism, and all that has hurt me, and I can’t help embrace it all and see it as beautiful. And in doing so, feel such deep empathy and deep sorrow, for in seeing that in myself I see it in all of us. We are not so different, you and I.
