Wednesday, August 12, 2009

On Death

There are songs that I often hear before I go to sleep. There is a fixed set that I must hear before I finally begin to drift off into the deeper recesses. A time soon comes when I realize that the song in my ear is beginning to blend and bleed into the random impulses that my sub-conscious brain throws up. When my sleep begins with such noisy delirium, the chaos of unintelligible thoughts slowly fading into blankness, I find myself to have slept the best. Death, in a certain sense. Except that, in this case, I have the benefit of hindsight that inspires faith in the fact that I'll wake up the next morning.

On death, then. I can instantly recall three songs from the set that I just described that, for one reason or another, almost make you feel like you'll never return from the chaos ridden oblivion. There is Like a Stone by Audioslave for starters, then there are Amsterdam by Coldplay, and My December by Linkin Park. Like a Stone is a song about an old man whose kin have passed on, and he waits for his release, recounting his life. Therefore, the obvious association with death. The other two songs have their own unique reasons why I associate them as I do.

Last night as I cycled through Amsterdam one last time, I began to 'develop new perspective' as I later put across to a friend of mine. I began to wonder (as may have many of my contemporaries and predecessors) what a person might feel moments before death. To which, I found myself realizing that a person who has lived a life without regret, and awakens to this fact moments before they die, might in fact be experiencing, rather ironically, the most liberating moment of their life.

If there might be a day, when morning doesn't arrive, prepare for your liberation everyday. You wouldn't want to miss what might be the most amazing moment of your life.

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