When I was in the hospital at the beginning of November. I spent 2 days in an intensive care room with 2 other men before being moved into another room. They were either recovering from a brain aneurysm, or a stroke.

There was an older fellow about 75 who’d been in the hospital over a month who was an overt curmudgeon who’d insist on having a smoke every evening without success “I’ve worked hard in a factory all my life and I deserve to have a smoke. I don’t care if it’s bad for me! Its what makes me feel good!”

The nurses very patiently put up with his curses and never let him smoke but he’d persist every single night.

Then there was the gasping man across from me.

He was in a semi coma on intravenous feeding and a respirator. About every sixth inhalation he’d grasp desperately for air as if it were his last breath. I remember counting. It was regular. He looked to be about 80 years old. But the nurses would talk to him lovingly as if he could hear them. Sometimes he’d move a bit when they talked.

He was a puzzle to me.

I couldn't’t understand why a man near the end of his life in so much distress would want to live. Why didn’t he just give up and die? It seemed like maybe he was just afraid to die but when I put my attention on his gasping I detected no fear in his paroxysms. There was more yearning than fear. Though I was in a hell of a lot better shape than this man, I felt some affinity with him.

At first I couldn’t get the sameness.  I was not afraid to die. I had had enough spiritual experiences of life to know that life is continuous. I would live on. But still I was afraid. And when I contemplated that fear, there was a sweet and longing quality to it. There was not the sharp sense of aversion. After a few moments it hit me what the similarity was between the gasping man and me. 

It wasn’t that he was afraid to die.

He was afraid not to live.

His gasping was a grasping for life.

He hadn’t finished his living.

He hadn’t fully experienced what it was like to almost die and come back to life and feel the simple gratitude of just being in a body and being able to gaze through human eyes out the window

and watching

the wind blowing the leaves across the parking lot…

the everyday joy of looking in his children’s and partner’s eyes

and seeing

the unspoken love behind all the speaking…

the blessing of having a calling and a purpose in life

and struggling

to fulfill it…

and grace of all the wisdom that comes

from this human condition.

Like him I was afraid that I would die without fully engaging in why I was here. And it became clear to me that the tragedy of life is not that we die its that we do not fully live.

It made me sad to contemplate how many people die before their time in life, not due to some illness or accident but because they bring on these calamities because it is too painful to live their lives with no meaning. 

They miss that the simple purpose of life…

Life itself…is just living it fully.

Experiencing all of what we are experiencing in what we are experiencing.

How many people miss this?

How many people become like the curmudgeon, who in missing the fullness already present in life, try to fill their lives with something else… like too much smoking, working, recognition, acquiring, drinking, distraction…

The mind wants so much to find a meaning in life that it overlooks what is already inherently fullfilling ...

and if we don’t see it

we will find a neurotic purpose to occupy us.

Life is Living.

And when we live it fully and then examine it there’s a gold mine of wisdom in it…but the living comes first.

I must confess...

I loved that gasping man.

I even loved that curmudgeon.

They taught me a lot.

I pray that they have recovered and

teach everyone they meet

what they reminded me

about living.

Be you to Fullness

Russell