This is beautiful.
Well, I want to say that I make this thought exercise often, as part of my daily meditations and my inner work (my sadhana). I have this practice to sit quietly and come back to my body, then asking me if I'm giving value to the life itself, or if I'm lost in any pretension about my future.
And I see how stupid is that last tendency, because there's no future. It's a bit funny that I wrote exactly that phrase in my last post, out of a profound feeling of thankfulness to the people that is helping me to live along my own calling.
I live in a country where the violence is a daily thing, and I've seen a big amount of dear friends and relatives murdered by bad people. So I couldn't enjoy a life where death is something far or strange... it is always in front of me. This experience has shaped my own understanding of the world, my spirituality and even the character of my poetry.
When I think about death, I know it is always close; but I need to face it with all the wisdom I could gathered, that's why I am a practitioner of shamanism... to become a friend of the unknown.
Lastly I should say that my perspective on this issue is a bit different from what I've seen in perhaps the majority of people. When people think seriously about death, they think they can "solve" it, in any way: well, I'll travel to the Himalayas; I'll go to see the world... or even I'll cheat on my partner, because that's something I always wanted and never did.
I respect those perspectives, but I don't share them because I know that death is not something we can solve in any way. Such ideas could be just the same denial of death that characterizes our daily lives, the same anxiety to win over death: Well, you will take me, but at least I will experience this thing, and that other thing... HA! You lose
I prefer a mindful reaction that accepts death with great humility. We are always dying... though we may be unaware of that. When we are aware, we don't want to rush anymore because we know we are just running straight to the grave. We start to give value to the present moment, to this delightful simple experience to be alive, to be breathing. And from that gratefulness, we just begin to make decisions out of the empathy, the quietness, the health of our lives.
Well, I'm always in this path. This is my path with heart.