When I was young, more than half a life ago, I was into white water kayaking. It was great fun heading down the river when we made it the right way around the rocks and hydraulics. Reading the river beforehand was a must, since often right means fun and left means death. We enjoyed life these days, but thinking back, I must say we were not much attached to it.
“Awesome, I almost drowned!” were the breathless words a friend shouted in excitement after we pulled him out last second from his boat which was squeezed by the current underneath a big boulder. Growing old was not a perspective, but a worry, if at all.
April 2020. Suddenly we all have time, at home. Plenty of time.
Not all of us, though. Some are much busier than before, and they cannot enjoy the safety and quietness of a temporary hermits’ life. We clap our hands for them and keep them working for us, underpaid.
About 0,1 per mill of the world population are infected by the new Sars-CoV-2 virus as of today, with 46,413 deaths so far (1).
“Of the roughly 150,000 people who die each day across the globe, about two thirds—100,000 per day—die of age-related causes” (2).
Enough statistics. Although I seriously wonder why these figures let me (a trained scientist) come to so much different conclusions than most of my peers.
Death is guaranteed, sickness very likely and old age a mercy. That is what Buddha called “dukkha”. We all have to die, unavoidably, sooner or later. The meaning of our life, if we want to define such thing, is to pass on what we have to the living, to those having a few days or years more to spend on earth after we are gone. The meaning of our life is to ever let it go, give it away freely (and this, if anything, is my understanding of “rebirth”).
Now the world decided to shut down. To stop passing on their knowledge to the next generation, to interrupt the stream of wisdom flowing from the old to the young. The world decided to take away a young generation their summer, their school’s end, their start into job or studies. To put a hold to their, and our future. To keep them confined at home, deprived of all meaningful experience.
The world decided to take a generation of young grandchildren their maybe last chance to spend time with granny and grandpa, months of exchange lost during a most formative period of their life.
It is not about fun and pleasure we have to postpone for a few weeks to save millions of lives (save for how long … weeks, months, maybe a year or two?). A life cannot be saved. It can only be spent.
This is the big illusion within the current crisis.
Inevitably we will die. And if we did not live in vein, something will be passed on. Clinging to life, my little existence, for the price of stopping the stream of human life on earth – what a selfish endeavour!
What happens now, these days, I am sure, will not enter history books as a world-wide unified act of seclusion to save millions of lives. It will be remembered as a suicide in fear of death. Or, from a Buddhist point of view: a childish attempt to deny impermanence and ignore dukkha.
Month after month the young generation protested Friday for Friday for a global change, the future of coming generations and life on earth – and not much happened. Now our last few old and possibly sick years on earth are in danger (given we get infected, with a probability of about 1% or less to die), and we shut all down in no time.
While I stay at home, as I’m supposed to, I hope this madness will end soon. We all have to die. So please, let us care about those who will be living a bit longer than us! This is true compassion.
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(1) https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html April 1st, 2020
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_rate