What if...?

I was talking to someone the other day and told her about something I had been contemplating. What if the life we have is one that we create together in another space? What if we sit around like writers of a sitcom or writers of a screenplay and bounce ideas off of each other?

"Wouldn't it be fun if we met under these circumstances?" "How do you think we would be if we introduced someone else into the mix?" "What could happen if we...?" "I would do...and then you could..."

What if we did this in a playful way, like children do when they are at play? What if we were gleeful in setting up the opportunities for interaction and the challenges we would face and the lessons we would learn? What if we didn't take it seriously because we knew that we'd come. We'd perform. And then the performance would end, and then we'd get to do a different "play," and be a different character. We could play the bad guy once in a while, and be an angel at other times. Sometimes the teacher. Other times the student. Sometimes someone with pretense and obscenely rich. Other times someone who had no money with no need for pretense.

What if it was like a workshop that we are involved in? We do different exercises - some more pleasant than others, some more fun than others - in an attempt to learn something about ourselves and what life is.

The whole thing about life and death seems so serious and often so tragic. What if it is something we forgot to have fun with?

Ugh. I can almost hear people. She thinks it is fun to suffer, or plan suffering? Wth? (or more likely a different letter of the alphabet).

No. I don't think that at all, just in case anyone was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. None of us really knows what happens before we get here and after we leave. Some of us think we do. But there is really no way to know for certain, as we don't seem to be able to have access to that part of our existence while we are living in this one.

It is just something that crossed my mind as I cope with something that could be quite painful. Quite frankly, it is more fun to consider that possibility than to be in heartache over any other that many could - and do - come up with. There are so many possibilities that only leave people in more pain and anguish over what they could have done better or what they perceive themselves having done wrong.

Last night I met some new people. One person I was speaking to suggested to me that because my body knows how to heal, I need to believe it, and it will heal, as healing is only a natural course of events if my headspace is in the "right" space. That kinda makes it my fault if I don't heal and/or die. At least that is how it seems to me.

I once heard something to the effect that every illness can be healed, but not every person. I think the idea behind it is that we have our own journey to take, and if that journey includes illness and death from that illness, then that is what we need for our own soul and its development.

Ultimately we will all die. And there are so many ways that can happen. And it will happen sooner or later. Why is it "worse" in a way to die of an illness than it is to die of "natural causes?" Either way you go, your body takes leave of you, or you take leave of it. Either way, it is the end of the journey, but it is hard to say if it is the end of the road. Maybe what comes next when it comes is exactly what is supposed to happen and how it is supposed to happen.

Just like so much of life we label things as better or worse. And when labelled that way we have to find ways to fix those things we think are worse or bad. Life is good. Death is bad. We must stay away from death as long as we possibly can. That would be good.

As I write it occurs to me that I get to have a much more intimate relationship with life and death than most people do. Many people probably don't think about these things (after all, that's "bad") and therefore they die long before ever contemplating what death means in the context of life.

In some ways, I almost think it could be better to be "surprised." But in other ways, I am grateful for being able to contemplate these things, and to question them. There are times I feel like my life is so much richer for it - richer than it ever has been.

I would so love to live another 20 years or more and be able to look back on this time and be just as amazed about how far I have come as I am now reflecting on where I have been. I would love the opportunity to see who that person would be. I could never have imagined the one I am now, and I am really grateful I got the chance to meet her.

Too bad I don't have a copy of my script so I know what the next plot twist is. Cue the suspenseful music.