Dead or Alive?

Have you ever wondered what it would feel like if you were to die today?
What would your friends, family feel?
How easily would all your issues go away?
It would be a wonderful escape, wouldn’t it?

All this stuff, that you have been worrying about, would go away.

I am not in a dark place. Not depressed. And not thinking of it right now.

But sometimes I do. When things get too much.

I don’t mean doing things to harm myself. But you know, say if I were to sleep today and never wake up.
Wouldn’t it be great?
Not having to think about anything. Not worrying about all those stupid issues.
Everything would be sorted. They would take care of themselves.

You know what is weird though?
I have thought of this umpteen times, and then I actually got close to dying. Twice. Real close.

And both these times, I didn’t want to die.

And these issues, which I think death would solve, didn’t even seem like real issues then.
I wasn’t worried about what job I would be taking, or who I would be dating.
I wasn’t worried about anything.

I just wanted to get out of it alive. And I was happy I did.
Life seemed to be a gift in itself, and everything else appeared to be just so small, so trivial.

Another funny thing? This feeling didn’t last. As soon as things got back to normal, I lost sight of what was real. I got busy with the grind. The next job, the next guy.

As a kid, as somebody who lost too many people too young, I never wanted to die. At least not soon, and definitely not because of any stupid reasons. Like say, getting in the deep end of the pool when you don’t know swimming. Or, driving insanely fast.

I have always wanted to live. And do. And redo. And see. And just be. Because as stupid as it sounds, once you are dead, you don’t come back. You don’t know what happened, you don’t get a shot at doing it again. There are no second chances. You hear about so many people, who consume poison, and then, ask the doctor repeatedly to save them. And when the doctor can’t and they are gone, they just can’t take it back. That moment, that step, they can’t rewind and redo the whole thing. They are gone.

So, yeah, I want to live. But I guess I still gotta figure out how, or what for, and how to, so that death doesn’t seem like an escape. So life doesn’t seem like death.