Living vs Being Alive

My take on death is delightfully captured in one of my favorite cartoons.  The grim reaper is escorting a buddhist monk from a meditation hall.  On his way out the door, the monk turns to a fellow monk who remains behind on his meditation cushion and says, “I’ll be right back.” 

I have no big attachment to being alive, but I am enthusiastic and then some about living.

How do I distinguish between the two?

Being alive is dependent on whether God cuts the string so to speak, something way out of my control at this stage of my spiritual evolution.  Attachment to things I can’t control (like other people’s behavior or the outcome of anything) is a quick cause of misery. 

Living, meanwhile, is rooted in how much integrity I invest in addressing life’s two most important questions: What’s going on, and what’s the healthiest action I can take in this moment?  That I am in charge of, so far as I can tell.  

If, when death is rapping on my chamber door, I’m thinking, “Boy, I wish something else were happening,” I’m sabotaging my life’s intention of embracing whatever comes my way with all the love I can.  It sounds funny, but if being alive is a condition for my happiness, I’m screwed.  It means my last breath is destined to be less than welcome.  I prefer not to test whether I can pull this off, but I aspire to be, if not joyful or fearless, at least without regrets should, by some surreal twist of fate, I find myself rollerskating down the side of the Empire State Building.

Speaking of which, I’m reviewing the advanced directive information that is supposed to give those who provide me healthcare a framework for doing so should I be unable to speak for myself someday.  It’s been enlightening.  I’ve learned I hold a view that may hasten my demise.  And I just might be okay with that.  Further, I’m realizing it is a view grounded in trauma that dates to my early childhood.  Many of us know this trauma.  It can fuel addiction in any of its myriad forms.

I enjoy the good fortune of having received some excellent medical treatment.  That I’m a long-time recovering alcoholic and cancer surviver are just two of many reasons I feel this way.  Unrelated to my gratitude is my opinion that so called “healthcare” as it is provided in the U.S. is, in one particular way, immoral.

Here’s an example of why I use that rather charged word.  While writing this I learned that the Nobel Prize winning physicist Leon Lederman, who died last October, had auctioned his Nobel medal to pay for his medical care.  That our nation’s approach to providing medical services includes the premise that it is okay for a citizen to become financially damaged, even devastated, because of their health is, to me, nuts.  Colossally immature.  And I wish not to collude with it as best I can.  

What my resistance might look like I’m waiting for the universe to reveal.  

One possibility is including in my advance directive, and presenting to all institutions that might provide me service even today, something like the following statement:

I do not agree to pay for any medical-related service beyond that which is covered by the insurance I carry.  I’m not refusing to pay period.  I’m refusing to have have my life financially compromised by my health, if I can help it, and only I will determine what “compromised” means.  Should this choice on my part result in me being denied service, that’s fine.  

Well, well, I find myself wondering.  What instigates such a dramatic response?  Am I really willing to risk dying in this way, even if I will be right back?  How deep a story about what’s going on can I uncover?  

Whatever the full answer, it’s related to a feeling of helplessness in the face of injustice, a feeling that, for me, began very early in this lifetime as I learned, as many of us have, that love and acceptance were conditional.  Behave or suffer, basically.  This wound to the parental attachment essential for healthy childhood development has led to many painful implications I continue to learn from.  Addiction is one.  Another is a heightened sensitivity to the harm (injustice) caused by ignorance.  

I’m grateful that my pursuit of understanding is accompanied by two other of life’s important questions: Who am I committed to being or die trying, and what does that look like here?