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I have found some solace in gardening that helps me accept mortality. Life and death is around you every day in a garden. When you start seeds, some turn to seedlings, some don't. Some seedlings die, some live. If you are as bad of a gardener as I am, you plant triple the seeds so hopefully some germinate and grow, the weak ones I just pluck out and compost. Some of those seedlings thrive and become big healthy plants, some never really amount to much and they die early. Blight killed a lot of tomato plants a few years ago. The soil is teeming with life that is thriving because of decaying (dead) plant matter. I few years ago I bought 500 worms for the garden. They eat dying plant matter and turn it into amazing compost. Some worms died before I could get them in the ground, some helped my cucumbers grow to 15' tall. Living, but, destructive pests do not live long in my garden, but helpful insects are welcome. I plant a pollinator garden just for them. Then, at the end of the season everything dies. In the spring it all stars again. You get to see the entire circle of life play out every day and then again every season. It has a training effect on me. Some people go to church for answers, I water tomato plants. It has given some comfort to know I'm part of a bigger organism and my death will perpetuate life of another kind, if I choose to let my body feed life. Also, if you are young and reading this, when you hit 50, and/or when you have kids, that's when mortality really hits you. But that's when you are (usually) most able to positively impact others. The point of life is to have kids and perpetuate our species. The meaning of life is to help others. I mean locally, help other people. People near you. Your mother or your neighbor or the mailman. Maybe you have little impact on the entire world but you can make a huge impact on a person very near you. Do that enough and when you are dying one day you will think of their faces and the faces of the kids you helped and accept the unknown and that you did the best you could. |