SATURDAY, 1 MAY 2004
We, human beings have this amazing capacity of knowing we are going to die yet we continue combing our hair, brushing our teeth, eating our breakfast and going to work … in the face of this terrible knowledge! How do we do it?
Many people spend their days collecting things – material possessions – that they cannot take with them when their physical existence reaches its end. I spend my days collecting words that I can leave behind.
And what happened? I got my just rewards for thoughts about personal happiness and for the killing of a proud, brave cockroach just before going to bed – I dreamed about death all night!
Got up with difficulty at nine o’clock, and went to buy breakfast. Sun was shining nicely as I was riding through the morning market crowd. “That’s what you get when you think you’re happier these days – and when you step on a cockroach,” I thought.
Then, around the next corner, a Hallelujah chorus waited in anticipation, with a neon board announcing another bit of truth on my path to enlightenment: “We must strive to be happy exactly because death is on our case every single day.”
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