Life-Death continuum

 

Borders diluted 

The concept of life and death have always intrigued me as it's a dichotomous  idea rather than a continuum. There are ideas of cycle of life, life after death, living dead. In a way, most of the people in the world are living dead.

Life in its fullest form is where your body functions, mind functions, soul don't wander, emotions expressed or unexpressed are present. Then you feel complete, wholesome, ready to face the harshness of the world. Whenever a part of it is lost or is dysfunctional, the life just lingers, you live the life of someone else and you feel incomplete. The fear of facing your own self grows inside.

Many people fear death, but on the other side, there are many people who can't accept life and it's associated harshness. The thought that we are one among the beings to take life forward make us move on. And the thought that we are one among the beings to succumb to death and not to take life forward takes away the feeling of fear of death.

So life and death in my belief is not a binary aspect. It's a continuum where each person is a part, it's ups, downs, stops, jerks everything should be encompassed as a cycle till you feel the world is enough for you and you have to leave it fully.

What gives a person an identity in the world is name, gender, religion, education aspects, work and so on. But there are identities beyond these basic criterias. Identities arise from families, groups one is associated with, places you reside, related behaviour and so on too.
Whenever there is an identity conflict as to how one perceives oneself and how others perceive you as, the feeling of a dead perception creeps in you. If beings around you, want you to have the dead feeling, even when you are alive deep within yourself, you feel dead.
There are conflicting ideas across religions on the concept of death. Some belief death is just loss of all bodily functions and life ends with a dysfunctional body. And there there are various methods of managing a dead body.

Some believe the persistence of soul beyond the death of a body and those souls existing through other functional bodies. This may be the reason why memories persist even after a person's death and their presence is felt near you.

My thought has always pondered in a way as to why life can't be taken forward for those who always wanted a life as a soul seeking new ways of life and new ways of achieving their intentions. But threats of souls disturbing the naive ones do exist.

Most of us remain with our basic needs in life to move on until we get new ideas, receive new hopes and have new dreams or someone recognises us as their hope. Thus, the concept of living dead is true to an extent until a new life or life expectation creep in.

Life after death is somewhat tricky as it is like treasoning death if death is an ultimatum. But I believe good souls should live even after death by taking another life form or through a being who hopes for a life.

As a doctor, my idea of life and death has changed after seeing life in its different forms and has taken a concept of continuum rather than discrete ideas. Life after death is also not an alien idea. There are stories related to it and people have shared their experiences about it. Wandering souls and their attainment of peace is something which anyone should consider. There are methods to appease the craving souls and ways to fight away the disturbing ones. Many of the mental health problems are discarded and not addressed to with few medicines and outcasting. I believe there are deeper meanings to their problems, symptoms and behaviour and tailored solutions have to be provided for betterment and satisfaction.