Life Lessons: Two Experts On Death And Dying Teach Us About The Mysteries Of Life And Living

Chapter One: The Lesson of Authenticity

Stephanie, a woman in her early forties, shared this story at a lecture:

"One Friday afternoon several years ago, I was on my way from Los Angeles to Palm Springs. This is not the best time to take on the Los Angeles freeway traffic, but I was anxious to get to the desert to spend a relaxing weekend with friends.

"At the outskirts of Los Angeles, the cars in front of me came to a standstill. As I came to a stop behind a long line of cars, I glanced in my rearview mirror to discover that the car behind me was not stopping. In fact, it was hurling toward me with tremendous speed. I realized that the driver was not paying attention, that I was going to be hit, and hit hard. I knew that given his speed and the fact that I was nose-to-rear with the car stopped in front of me, I was in great danger. I realized, in that moment, that I might die.

"I looked down at my hands clenched on the steering wheel. I hadn't consciously tightened them; this was my natural state, and this is how I lived life. I decided that I did not want to live that way, nor did I want to die that way. I closed my eyes, took a breath, and dropped my hands to my side. I let go. I surrendered to life, and to death. Then I was hit with enormous force.

"When the movement and noise stopped, I opened my eyes. I was fine. The car in front of me was wrecked, the car behind me was demolished. My car was compacted like an accordion.

"The police told me I was lucky I had relaxed, for muscle tension increases the likelihood of severe injury. I walked away feeling that I had been given a gift. The gift wasn't just that I had survived unhurt, it was greater than that. I saw how I had been living life and was given the opportunity to change. I had held life with a clenched fist, but now I realized that I could hold it in my open hand, as if it were a feather resting on my palm. I realized that if I could relax enough to release my fear in the face of death, I could now truly enjoy life. In that moment, I felt more connected to myself than I ever had before."

Like many others at the edge of life, Stephanie learned a lesson -- not about death, but about life and living.

Deep inside all of us, we know there is someone we were meant to be. And we can feel when we're becoming that person. The reverse is also true. We know when something's off and we're not the person we were meant to be.

Consciously or not, we are all on a quest for answers, trying to learn the lessons of life. We grapple with fear and guilt. We search for meaning, love, and power. We try to understand fear, loss, and time. We seek to discover who we are and how we can become truly happy. Sometimes we look for these things in the faces of our loved ones, in religion, God, or other places where they reside. Too often, however, we search for them in money, status, the "perfect" job, or other places, only to find that these things lack the meaning we had hoped to find and even bring us heartaches. Following these false trails without a deeper understanding of their meaning, we are inevitably left feeling empty, believing that there is little or no meaning to life, that love and happiness are simply illusions.

Some people find meaning through study, enlightenment, or creativity. Others discover it while looking at unhappiness, or even death, directly in the eye. Perhaps they were told by their doctors they had cancer or had only six months to live. Maybe they watched loved ones battle for life or were threatened by earthquakes or other disasters.

They were at the edge. They were also on the brink of a new life. Looking right into the "eye of the monster," facing death directly, completely and fully, they surrendered to it -- and their view of life was forever changed as they learned a lesson of life. These people had to decide, in the darkness of despair, what they wanted to do with the rest of their life. Not all of these lessons are enjoyable to learn, but everyone finds that they enrich the texture of life. So why wait until the end of life to learn the lessons that could be learned now?

What are these lessons life asks us to master? In working with the dying and the living, it becomes clear that most of us are challenged by the same lessons: the lesson of fear, the lesson of guilt, the lesson of anger, the lesson of forgiveness, the lesson of surrender, the lesson of time, the lesson of patience, the lesson of love, the lesson of relationships, the lesson of play, the lesson of loss, the lesson of power, the lesson of authenticity, and the lesson of happiness.

Learning lessons is a little like reaching maturity. You're not suddenly more happy, wealthy, or powerful, but you understand the world around you better, and you're at peace with yourself. Learning life's lessons is not about making your life perfect, but about seeing life as it was meant to be. As one man shared, "I now delight in the imperfections of life."

We're put here on earth to learn our own lessons. No one can tell you what your lessons are; it is part of your personal journey to discover them. On these journeys we may be given a lot, or just a little bit, of the things we must grapple with, but never more than we can handle. Someone who needs to learn about love may be married many times, or never at all. One who must wrestle with the lesson of money may be given none at all, or too much to count.

We will look at life and living in this book, discovering how life is seen from its outer edge. We will learn that we are not alone, seeing instead how we are all connected, how love grows, how relationships enrich us. Hopefully, we will correct the perception that we are weak, realizing that not only do we have power, we have all the power of the universe within ourselves. We will learn the truth about our illusions, about happiness and the grandness of who we really are. We will learn how we have been given everything we need to make our lives work beautifully.

In facing loss, the people we have worked with realized that love is all that matters. Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us, and take with us. They've stopped looking for happiness "out there." Instead, they've learned how to find richness and meaning in those things they already have and are, to dig deeper into the possibilities that are already there. In short, they've broken down the walls that "protected" them from life's fullness. They no longer live for tomorrow, waiting for the exciting news about the job or the family, for the raise or the vacation. Instead, they have found the richness of every today, for they have learned to listen to their heart.

Life hands us lessons, universal truths teaching us the basics about love, fear, time, power, loss, happiness, relationships, and authenticity. We are not unhappy today because of the complexities of life. We are unhappy because we miss its underlying simplicities. The true challenge is to find the pure meaning in these lessons. Many of us think we were taught about love. Yet we do not find love fulfilling, because it's not love. It is a shadow darkened by fear, insecurities, and expectations. We walk the earth together yet feel alone, helpless, and ashamed.

When we face the worst that can happen in any situation, we grow. When circumstances are at their worst, we can find our best. When we find the true meaning of these lessons, we also find happy, meaningful lives. Not perfect, but authentic. We can live life profoundly.

Perhaps this is the first and least obvious question: Who is it that is learning these lessons? Who am I?

We ask ourselves this question over and over again during our lives. We know for sure that between birth and death there is an experience that we call life. But am I the experience or the experiencer? Am I this body? Am I my faults? Am I this disease? Am I a mother, banker, clerk, or sports fan? Am I a product of my upbringing? Can I change -- and still be me -- or am I cast in stone?

You are none of those things. You undoubtedly have faults, but they are not you. You may have a disease, but you are not your diagnosis. You may be rich, but you are not your credit rating. You are not your résumé, your neighborhood, your grades, your mistakes, your body, your roles or titles. All these things are not you because they are changeable. There is a part of you that is indefinable and changeless, that does not get lost or change with age, disease, or circumstances. There is an authenticity you were born with, have lived with, and will die with. You are simply, wonder-fully, you.

Watching those who battle illness makes it clear that to see who we are we must shed everything that is not authentically us. When we see the dying, we no longer see those faults, mistakes, or diseases that we focused on before. Now we see only them, because at the end of life they become more genuine, more honest, more themselves -- just like children and infants.

Are we only able to see who we actually are at life's beginnings and endings? Do only extreme circumstances reveal ordinary truths? Are we otherwise blind to our genuine selves? This is the key lesson of life: to find our authentic selves, and to see the authenticity in others.

The great Renaissance artist Michelangelo was once asked how he created sculptures such as the Pietàs or David. He explained that he simply imagined the statue already inside the block of rough marble, then chipped away the excess to reveal what had always been there. The marvelous statue, already created and eternally present, was waiting to be revealed. So is the great person already inside of you ready to be revealed. Everyone carries the seeds of greatness. "Great" people don't have something that everyone else doesn't; they've simply removed a lot of the things that stand in the way of their best selves.

Unfortunately, our inherent gifts are often hidden by layers of masks and roles we've assumed. The roles -- such as parent, worker, pillar of community, cynic, coach, outsider, cheerleader, nice guy, rebel, or loving child caring for ailing parent -- can become "rocks" burying our true selves.

Sometimes roles are thrust upon us: "I expect you to study hard and grow up to be a doctor." "Be ladylike." "Here at the firm, you must be efficient and diligent if you expect to advance."

Sometimes we eagerly assume roles because they are, or seem to be, useful, uplifting, or lucrative: "Mom always did it this way, so that's probably a good idea." "All Scout leaders are noble and sacrificing, so I will be noble and sacrificing." "I don't have any friends at school, the popular kids are surfers, so I'll be a surfer."

Sometimes we consciously or unwittingly adopt new roles as circumstances change and are hurt by the result. For instance, a couple may say, "It was so wonderful before we got married. Once we were married, something went wrong." When the couple was together before, they were just being. The moment they got married they took on the roles that had been taught to them, trying to "be a husband" and "be a wife." On some subconscious level they "knew" what a husband or wife should be like and tried to act accordingly instead of being themselves and discovering what kind of spouses they wanted to be. Or, as one man explained, "I was such a great uncle, now I feel so disappointed in the father I've become." As an uncle, he interacted with children from his heart. When he became a father, he felt he had a specific role to assume, but that role got in the way of his being who he is, authentically himself.

EKR

It's not always easy to find out who you authentically are.