Only those who are truly aware of the finality of their deaths are the ones who truly live. Only then will we not take anything for granted. Only then will we realize the beauty of life. Yet sometimes our society distracts us from things that really matter in life. Sometimes we worry so much about our survival that we forget to really live. Worse is when we are preoccupied so much with making money that we become automatons of money. We become like living human machines with our boring daily routine. So safe and so secure we make of our existence that everything happens as expected and the unexpected has no room in our lives. Chance meetings, discontinuities, coincidences fail to make that subtle touch of the spirit because we become so insensitive and so cold and so preoccupied with what we call our lives. Stephen Donaldson wrote of this in his famous novel: These are pale deaths which men call their lives: for all the scents of green things growing, each breath is but an exhalation of the grave. Bodies jerk like puppet corpses, and hell walks laughing… Thus i am reminded of the song “Hotel California” where you find all the amenities, such a lovely place, plenty of room, where you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave… It’s sad and its touching how the modern world has enslaved our souls with commercialism and left our spirits dry. I liken this to Max Weber’s scathing criticism of society—where we find ourselves inside the “Golden Iron Cage of Bureaucracy”. In the Gospel we read, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his own soul?“
