You know anyone who isn't dying for something? You probably do not. No, you probably haven't thought of it this way. You have an uncle who's dying for the local baseball team to win. You have a young niece that's just dying for a young man to ask her out on a date, a certain young man. You have an aunt who's dying for things to stabilize at work, to get along with her boss, to keep her job. You have an uncle who is dying for it to be time for that golf vacation that he's been dreaming of and working toward every day for a year.
Gandhi was dying for the liberation of India. Nelson Mandela was dying for the end of apartheid. Jesus was dying for the end of the reign of greed. Alice Paul was dying for her sisters to have equal rights with men.
How frequently do we step in, in our own minds, or with words, 'Oh, uncle, you shouldn't be 'dying' for that golf vacation, that's so morbid!' In our culture which caters to the head and the flesh, intoxications, selfishnesses there of, it's entirely appropriate that we die, that were dying for selfish things. But it's an indictment of our way of life, our way of being, if we're dying for unselfish things. And we can't have that now, can we?
But there is more to it than that. Our measured, through studies, our measured amount of working memory, that which holds our 'conscious' thoughts at any second, is immensely small, finite - 1 major, and maybe a 2nd minor thoughts in any second. So quite literally, that conscious thought, goal, thing... we are 'dying for', is 'killing,' displacing, keeping out of consciousness a virtually infinite number of competing things we could be 'dying for.' Right? Do you think Gandhi was struggling to not be dying for a golf vacation? At the point that he so became that which was dying for justice in India, he died to the golf vacation, the law practice, the business suits.... And, at the point that we die to the values, the sanctioned 'wants' of this sickest of all societies, we 'die' to our global neediest, to Joy, to Peace, to meaningfulness….
What are you dying for?
What are you dying to?
Are you ok with that?
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