Death. Why is it that we are so afraid of death, not just death, but the thought of death. I don’t understand anymore, if I ever did. I think I have some recollection of being afraid of this notion of dying. Maybe frightened of not knowing what was to come next, if anything. Now, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what happens when I wake up after I have gone to sleep. The next day is the next day, what it brings is what it brings, and what I bring to it.

Death, is sleep. Death is rest. Death is slowing down and stopping. Death is nothing to fear unless you are afraid of these things. There is no need to go on. There is no need for anything more. If there is something beyond death then so there is. We will be there when we get there. If there is a hell as some believe, then it will be no worse or better that this I imagine.

We all suffer, this is the first noble truth of Buddhism. This is a wonderful noble truth, this is a wonderful belief to embrace as what it means is that you can always see in another their suffering. Everyone suffers, no one is exempt. So although it may not appear so on the outside, every single person is the same as you, inside they suffer. They doubt, they fear, they worry, they are uncertain. This is the human condition: to suffer.

Being ready to die is not the same as wanting to die. Being ready to die simply means that perhaps I have acknowledged that we all suffer, I have acknowledged and accepted that I suffer, and perhaps that I can do without that, that I am ready to be still and stop, and if needs be, if the reincarnationists are right, I’m ready to start again. To try again.

I have done so much it seems. I have seen so much. and now I worry, like a dog with a bone, about the same things over and over and over. I will keep worrying this same bone until I die, and then perhaps I will start worrying it all over again. I’m happy doing this, although it is tiring at times, and there is a sense of impotence and frustration attached to it. I know that maybe I would be happier not worrying, but there you go.

Ready to die. Something we could think about a little more. Death. Our own mortality. It could happen tomorrow, or the next day, or perhaps in a month, or a year. We don’t have to be old to die, we don’t have to know we are dying to die. Death can come all of sudden, in a rush, unexpected.

Although it does not need to be unexpected. Rather it can be expected, as it is the one certainty in this life. We all die. So being ready for death is in one way just about acknowledging and accepting the inevitable. I have no fear of leaving – I’m not sure whether this is something that people worry about, whether this is a part of death that people have fear of. For me I am not afraid of leaving. In many ways I feel tired, weary of this continued existence, this struggle to make sense of it all.

I no longer have an attachment to the ideological imperatives of capitalism. Thankfully I seem to have spewed these from my body, I have detoxed myself and no longer struggle with ‘making it’ in this capitalist world. I do not get much satisfaction from the trappings, from acquiring things, things that reflect back at me, and tell others who I am. Thankfully I seem less and less entrapped in this way. No, this is not what I struggle with, I am happy with my place in the world. My life is one largely uncluttered and unaffected by the sway of capitalist enterprise. I buy little, own less and desire even less. This is not what I struggle with.

My struggle is with myself and my need to understand. A fish out of water is increasingly how I seem, and in that …. My pain and my suffering stem from my attachment to knowing and to finding something or someone who will confirm for me what it means to breath. I kind of know there is no one out there who can do this, and so my search and my desire and my despair is futile. So I am ready. To give up? I guess so. To end the search and rest.

I want to leave a message for my sons Tobias and Max. This is not a suicide note. This is simply a message to my sons. I know I could die tomorrow, or the next day, so in knowing that I want you to know that you have been the brightest lights in my world. You are a light that has never dimmed, from the moments you were born to now, you have remained all there is, and all there ever will be, to me. It has been the greatest blessing to know and experience a feeling of love so strong, so consistent, so deep, that it never wavers, never falters, never diminshes.

Thank you for letting me love you. Thank you for being so so wonderful, for being perfect, for gifting me with the experience of unconditional love.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

I ate gingernuts and crisps, read about tropical fish and fat bikers in Montana and in between listened in to two young men earnestly discussing the merits of different debating techniques. Then the train stopped tripping and I was walking through the star-filled night. There were no more distractions. I thought of you at the Fortitude Valley station, of you in my arms not once but twice, and walking away, moving again, is a difficult thing. My heart hurts. I walk alone, slowly through this dark warm night and you are here, right here, with me.

No more biscuits, no more stories, no more debating strategies, just shadows and the sounds of a strange Australian night. Love is painful. Real. Right here. You are here my son. You always will be. And tonight I saw you, for the first time in a long time and I saw some of what you have become, what you are.

 You are a big man, a big loveable mountain of man, and in you tonight I saw all that was good in my father. I saw his tenderness and enormous capacity for love. I saw once again his gentleness and his simple and easy knowing. He knew love, he trusted it, as you do my son. You have that, what a gift. You know where you stand, what you feel, who you are. You know that love exists. You know how to simply be in it.

 This is what I came for. This is what I travelled the world for, left the woman I love for, changed my life for. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for letting me see you Max. Thank you for knowing that that was all that I needed, and wanted. I am so proud of you. I am humbled. You are a wonderful young man, so strong in your heart.

 Love is painful. Real. I love you with all my heart. Until we meet again, goodbye…

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Cari

I’m thinking of you this morning. I haven’t heard back from a text I sent and here I am in Australia feeling so much more distant that ever before. And it may be so much harder for you, not knowing where I am, only that I am staying with ’some woman’ you know nothing about.

I have such a need to hear your voice, or if that is not possible, then at least make the sounds in my head as I read your words, imagine your laughter, the rise and fall, the stops and starts, the melody that will bring you closer to me. I need to know that you are ok.

I need you to know that I am ok, that I am thinking of you all the time, too many times a day I wish I was with you, and I let such thoughts go, only for them to return, and I have come to take pleasure in that cycle of coming and going, for in that you are with me always.

I see Max very soon. I am excited and just a little bit anxious. Fortitude Valley, his territory, aptly named. In the years he has been here, away from me, he has I know carved out an identity. Changed, it seems to me, watching and wondering so many miles away, in shape and form much more than I.

Yet he remains my beautiful son, illuminated from the inside with such a love and a self knowing. It is this heart that I seek, to touch, once again, and to see and feel how it now manifests in all that he is.

And yes! The universe is a marvellous thing. I have just received a text from you -  a simple message – wishing me a great day – and now I know it will be!

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

We are born, with two people as our parents, well usually anyway. There is a randomness to this selection of parents as there is a randomness to everything that happens to us after we are born. These two people that came together to create us could have been any two people.

And these two people who are my parents, the two that are yours, are mine and yours for a reason. It is the fact that they could have been anybody, and it is a fact that they are not. They are specifically and uniquely who they are, that is what makes their presence in our lives so meaningful.

So I was thinking as I walked towards Morden this morning, why me? Why am I (this specific, unique and utterly complex bundle of discourses that make me ‘me’) in my sons’ lives. I don’t know. God knows / Nobody knows.  What I did discover this morning was that I hope that through knowing me (and I guess knowing me as their father) my sons have come to know that they are never ever trapped. That life is not a cage. It is the opposite. Life is a release.

Birth is a release. A setting free into a wild, safe, limitless and infinitely expansive playground. What we encounter, all that we encounter is simply part of our adventure. We are never trapped, always free, potentially re-creating ourselves every day. Today we choose who we are, and tomorrow we can be someone completely different if we so wish.

My life, through my childrens’ eyes, through my eyes, has been one of incontinuity, of change, of transformation. For whatever reason, whether we understand this lack of continuity as good or bad, it is as it is. So in this moment, Toby and Max, I just want you to know, you are always free.

Free to explore who you are. Free to walk away. Free to settle down. Free to start something new. Free to let it go. Free to follow your heart and listen to your head.

Anything that appears to stand in your way is simply a reflection. Step through the mirror and you will once again be on your way.

Free. Like the fox.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Well I am blessed with two wonderful sons, who even now when they are all grown up and so many miles away still cause me in any given moment to gush with joy and love. I’ve loved them forever, and they have given me so many moments of sheer wonder over the years. One of the unexpected joys that came with being a father was discovering my second childhood, and as Regina Brett has written;

‘It is never too late to have a second childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.’

Well I made the most of mine. Once I realised what a gift this was I grabbed it with both hands. I LOVED it!! I loved being a kid again – being with my sons on the floor constructing amazing random things first out of duplo and then graduating to lego. Playing in the park, playing with the dog, throwing frisbees and flying kites. Reading comics, playing computer games (until they started getting better than me) and watching children’s television. Wonderful!!

Ahhh too long in exile. I just lapped it up, and this was DEFINITELY one of our favourites shows.

Toby, Max and I LOVED the Muppet Babies. They made our dreams come true, they urged us to use our E-MADGE-E-NA-SHE -ONS. Fantastic. And we did. I remember Max, not even old enough to go to school, unable to sleep (an insomniac even back then), still wide awake late at night as I was falling asleep in my chair, and I would put an illicitly taped recording of the Muppet Babies on the tele and remind him to switch off the TV before he went to bed (does that mean I’m a bad dad?)

Thank you Kermit and Miss Piggy, Rowlf, Fozzie, Gonzo, Beaker, ANIMAL and the rest of the gang. Thanks Tobe. Thanks Max. I LOVED my second childhood more than my first because I got to spend it with you.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x