Giving Back to the Earth

In the morning I look in the mirror and I first tell myself that I love myself. And I do that until I believe it. And then once I believe it then I say... 'OK, and are you ready to die?' Part of being alive is being aware of your death. And I think that if I'm not conscious that I'm going to die then I'm not fully alive. That's not a bad thing. Let's make this a really juicy, luscious, full, vibrant day. I would hate to end my life on a day where I sat on the internet. Although I do that a bit more than I'd care to admit. I love being alive. I don't feel like there is enough time to do all the things that I want to do. I could die soon. We could be crossing the road and we could be run over. Or we could go to sleep and not wake up. I am always aware that this could happen to me soon. I'll be completely honest, no I'm not OK with it. I'm still afraid of dying. I'm not ready to go. I love this life, I love this body. I've still got so much more to do, I'm not in a hurry. We all arrive with a 'use by' date and there is no escaping it. And that's a little bit prickly, a little bit uneasy. And I don't want to avoid it anymore. I want to conquer this, I don't want to be afraid of it. And there is this little rumbling unknown in my reality so I want to know it. We have created a global dominant culture which is terrified of its own mortality. So we lock our old people away. We go and visit them on Sundays with a box of chocolates and say 'Hi gran, how are you doing?' The fear of death is so huge in our culture. It's one of the fundamental things that causes all the problems we have... creating permanence, trying to outlive ourselves, being scared of death, you know. Because we never have been taught to confront death. I think that there's reasons why we don't think about death. One is that actually on some level, it's been taken from us. In some cultures, Western culture, we've been so separated from death. Handing our beloved family member over to professionals who are all well intending people. And then next time you see her, she's made up in a box and you're not even that close to her. And then she's gone. And there's something in the process, the emotional process, that doesn't get completed. So I think there's a whole population of people walking around with unprocessed grief. And I think that affects everything in the world. I went to my dad's funeral but I didn't get to see his body. I don't remember seeing him in his coffin or even seeing his coffin. My dad was cremated. And I think if I had seen him and touched him and felt his hand I would have known that it was real. And that would have been scary and sad. But no scarier and no more sad than actually having your dad die anyway. The only thing that was left of my dad were his belongings which I hung onto for years and years and years. The way I held onto all his possessions was a way of me trying to hold onto him. I think even with modern embalming there is a little bit of that where people are still trying to hold on to their dead loved one. They're trying to stop the natural process of death. Now there are spiritual reasons to do that. There are some faiths that believe that you need your actual physical body for The Second Coming. So I don't want to minimise the cultural or the spiritual reasons that people would have to do embalming. But for me, I find it really strange that humans try to delay that final farewell. What are we preserving the body for? It should be feeding the soil. Where is that connection? Why are we even alienating ourselves from the planet to such an extent that we won't even give back. It's about giving back. We won't even give back our dead to the planet. That's how alienated we've become from who we are. What happened to burying someone in your fields and knowing that grandad is feeding this tree? The trees are our ancestors. Our ancestors are infused in everything because we've become part of the cycle of life and death. Pretty much from the minute that we are born we just start consuming. We're just using up our environment. And so for me the idea of dying and returning to the earth and decomposing... to me that's one very tiny way that I can give back to the actual physical earth. And I like that. I like the idea of not costing the earth any more at my death. Yeah, giving back to the earth. Death has taught me about impermanence and about really valuing what I have now in this moment. It's about living fully and vibrantly with an awareness that actually this is... this is going some day. This is going some day. This is all going to go. What do you want the end of your life to look like? I'd love to be in my home if possible, I'd love to be in my bed. I would love to have my loved ones around me. I would love to be wheeled out and to be under the trees and see the light and all the beautiful things. And then I would like my body to be wrapped up in a shroud. I'd like them to carry me out to the trees to a hole that is not too deep and lovingly lay me in there. And then cover me with soil. I would like them to plant some flowers there and a tree when the time was right. And then I'd like them to bring their children there some day or their children's children. I wouldn't mind if I got to haunt the place a little bit. But I also wouldn't mind if I joined the soul soup again and just got to surround the world with love. What do you leave behind? And how do you want to be remembered? I'd like to leave behind a trail of light like in the wake of a boat. Yeah, I'd like to leave the world a better place than I came into it. I want to be grace at the end however it happens. Thanks to all of you who helped make this film possible. All of our films are totally crowd funded. So if you'd like to continue to support us on our journey, check out our Green Renaissance page on Patreon.com

Channel: Green Renaissance

Views: 119,381

Keywords: green renaissance, sharing ideas, inspiring change, inspire, inspiration, death, dying, cremation, natural burial, burial, grief, grieving, new zealand, golden bay, south africa, family, friends, mindfulness, mindful, patreon, artlist

Id: 4tZW_ggXqDA

Length: 10min 48sec (648 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020