Life & Death Ponderings [PODCAST]
[*Automated Podcast Transcript. Typos likely.]
Hey everyone. It’s Amber Desmond with emotional medicine coaching. I’m your host and emotional awareness coach. Today I’d like to pontificate on some things I’ve been thinking about this past week. I’ve been laid up at home with a severe case of food poisoning and then on top of that I got my period and I’ve been experiencing some pretty horrific cramps and a lot of stuff has come to the surface both metaphorically and literally. I feel like there’s been a a great purging in my body for sure and as I was recovering and as I have been just being home and being in bed and resting, I’ve come up against a lot of resistance and fear and stories that I feel really grateful that I’ve become aware of them. I’ve kind of had this same wake up call over and over again. I feel like sometimes for me, I have to have a certain experience over and over again until it finally really hits me and hits home and can sort of penetrate my incredibly stubborn mind.
And I started spiraling into this whole story about my life and what am I doing and really getting down on myself and I’m feeling really horrible and kind of not seeing my progress and really focusing only on things that haven’t done yet or things that I want to do and really, really lasering in and this like really negative, harsh way of like, you know, why am I not doing these things and what’s wrong with me and dah, dah, dah, dah. And this tends to be kind of a, a pattern for me when I am sick or not feeling well. And I ended up having to be home for any kind of long period of time that I start to just really berate myself and beat myself up. And I spiral into this, you know, really intense feeling of like I’m always having to be accomplishing something and moving forward and doing things for my career and recognizing that I, I do not feel comfortable with rest and, um, really allowing myself just to kind of be, and that was a really interesting realization cause I kind of think of myself as this person who spends a lot of time chilling and being, and taking care of herself.
But I also realize that sometimes even in those experiences, they’re there with a purpose and sort of a, I’m doing this because, and you know, I, I pulled dance, um, for a hobby and that’s a lot of my, my downtime and fun is I pull the aunts, but it’s still an accomplishment. It’s still something I’m working on. It’s still something I can get better at. It’s, uh, you know, sort of social engagement when I go to classes and it’s exercise. And then I also, you know, will go spend time in nature, but that’s also like hiking and exercise and this activity. And so when I’m just having to literally do nothing, I find that it’s hard because then I know that I’m going to be confronted with that part of myself that really struggles with lying around. And, and it starts to really tell me stories about myself that aren’t true.
Like this is how your life always is. This is how it’s always going to be. Like really having a hard time grasping the impermanence of this particular experience. Seeing as I have a history of chronic pain and I do have hormonal imbalance problems and that my menstrual cycles can be really brutal. And that’s once a month that I’m confronted with pain and fatigue and IX can be extreme mood swings and depression and all kinds of things that come with my cycle. And then so when I get sick and there’s just this other interruption in my life, I, I realize how hard I am on myself. And of course I always think about, cause I’m kind of like see the biggest picture kind of person. And I find that really comforting when I kind of really pan out and stretch myself outside of my, my own version of myself.
And I see kind of the infinite universe in the world at large. And I think about that. I’ve never been afraid to die. I mean, of course I’m not like yay wanted to high. But I realized that what I fear more than anything is life and why I fear life is because life feels just that much harder. It because in life I’m confronted with having to be a person in death. I mean, of course it’s the great unknown and there’s definite fear in, you know, actual like if someone told me I was going to die tomorrow, I would be very scared and sad because I’m not ready to leave my human existence. But I just was really struck in bed that I’m probably more afraid of myself and the own suffering that I can cause myself than I am of of no longer existing in the human form.
And I found that that was really incredible and I’ve realized that repeatedly throughout my life. Like I said, sometimes I have to have the same realization in wake up call over and over again. And realizing why life seems hard and scary to me is because of how hard I am on myself about life and being a person and what that means and what I feel like I need to be doing and my drive and, and also feeling incredibly blocked by myself. And in my podcast where a previous podcast where I talked about your greatest block in your life is you, I cannot express how much I really mean that and how much I see it over and over again in myself and in everyone I’ve ever met. It’s not something I feel like I’m just making up. It’s something that I literally see over and over and over again in every single person.
Some people can get out of their way in a much easier way than others. Um, but it’s generally, I find that we’re always our own biggest challenge into, so the fact that like, it’s harder just to be here, to be a person then thought of not existing anymore. And this is not in a suicidal sense. This is no way like I’m ready to die or take my own life. But just realizing that to me, I feel like this is actually not, not just me. I feel like we’re all afraid of death because it is the unknown. It is the great unknown. Will we exist? Will we not exist? What, what is it? Where are we? Who are we? What happens? You know, for those who have, you know, have Christianity or other more like organized religious backgrounds, there’s the whole concept of heaven. Hell, you know, when are you going to be damned?
And you know, all those things to contend with, which I don’t have that background. I’m not really afraid of that. So that’s not a part of my, my process. But I really, I really feel that that’s a really, it’s a really powerful waking up moment is to realize that sometimes it would feel easier to be dead than to be alive and, but then also clinging, clinging to life, no matter how miserable we might be, that we still cling to being here. Because I think you know because we’re afraid of the unknown, but also because we know that it is such a gift to be here and that this is, if we, if we let it, if we let ourselves experience it, if we let ourselves open to life, that it can truly be heaven on earth and just seeing that thinking about what would be my greatest fear on my death bed and it would definitely be not the fear of death, but the fear that I didn’t live, that would be my biggest fear and regret.
It’s what wakes me up at night at times is this, am I living, am I really being here and am I enjoying it? Am I letting myself really, really live? I’m getting teary because I think I know that so many other people have this exact same feeling even if they might not have it in a really conscious capacity at all. We really want to do. Everything that we strive for in life is in that we are going to be happy and that we’re going to experience love and connection and purpose and find some sort of satisfaction because what is the point of life? It’s not to make money successes, great, but success in and of itself is just success is just another word for you. Feeling like you’ve had something to feel proud of, that you’ve accomplished something in your life, that you’ve had purpose and meaning and there’s a reason for it all.
When we have success, when we make money, when we strive for these careers, when we want to be healthy, when we look for romantic partnerships, it’s because we’re looking to be alive. We’re looking to embrace our experience on this planet because ultimately we have no idea, no idea why we’re here. Why are we here? Where were we before we were here? If we go somewhere, if you have the belief that you go somewhere when you die, if there’s some afterlife, some existence beyond this physical than you must’ve existed prior to your physical life. If your soul goes to heaven, if that’s what you believe, then were you in heaven before you came into this body?
And just recognizing that like there’s so many mysteries and so much magic and profound beauty in existence because really the irony is we think that with life we understand and that we have some sort of knowing and it’s not the unknown like death, but really life is the unknown. As you know. He gret says in game of Thrones, you know nothing, Jon snow, we know nothing. We’re always learning. We’re learning so much. We’ve learned so much just in this past decade. We, with our technology and science and understanding, we are discovering so much, but still we know nothing. And that can seem unsettling for some people. For sure. That feels really unsettling. We cling to wanting to know because if we know something, it feels safe. It feels secure. It feels like we have a grasp on something. Knowing we can control it, we can know what to expect and the outcome and who we are in that experience.
But really every day is a risk. And I don’t mean to scare anybody and that’s not my intention, but it’s a reality is that every day is the unknown. Every day you cannot know what’s going to come. Just as you cannot know what death is while you’re here in the physical. I think we’ve all in my personal belief system, I believe that we have infinite lifetimes and that I have been dead and reborn infinite times and that there are so many dimensions of existence and I, that’s a whole other podcast I’d get into. But [inaudible] so we all have experienced death I think many times over. And uh, but we keep coming back because life, no matter how hard and horrible and scary and traumatic it seems, it’s obviously where we want to be cause we’re here. You know, we feel like, Oh, I didn’t have a choice.
I didn’t choose to be here, but we don’t know that. I feel like we did in my deep intuitive soul knowing. And I speak only for myself. I can’t speak for anyone else. And this is what I believe, but I believe we’ve chosen this. We’ve chosen to be here and I believe that we are all creating, co-creating together our experience of life. We’re collective and realizing all of this. The point is for me, when I get into these really low dark places, when I’m trapped at home in my sick bed, feeling sorry for myself and being in pain and uncomfortable, it can feel like, why? Why is this happening to me? Why does my life sock and I feel like I can rush. I can try to rush through the recovery so I can get to my life again. I want to be, you know, myself again.
I want to get to my life again and I just had this moment again where I was struck my, this is my life. Being sick and being in this moment is not me, not in my life. This is a part of my life. It is sucky. It is uncomfortable. It’s not something I want to repeat or do for a long periods of time, but it’s also where I am. It’s what’s happening right now. I have the word surrender tattooed on my arm and I got it. I don’t even know how many years ago. I don’t know. Um, five years ago maybe. And the ironic thing is I didn’t even realize how much I needed that message over and over and over again. I mean, obviously some part of me knew like, Amber, you need to get this to remind yourself continuously to surrender and surrendering, as I’ve talked about before, is not about giving up.
It’s not about lying down die. It’s not about saying fuck it. I surrender. I don’t, you know, but it is. It’s surrendering is fuck it. Fuck it. I can’t be anywhere else right now. I can’t force myself to no longer be recovering from food poisoning. I can’t force myself to feel better by hating this situation cause it just causes more suffering. It’s just more shit piled on top of an already challenging situation. So I have to surrender to that experience right now. I’m not able to do the things I normally like to do right now. I don’t feel good right now. I’m having to face dark aspects of myself that I don’t like and I don’t want to believe exist and I want to numb out and escape them or be so busy that I’m not having to see them. And that’s not what’s happening.
What’s happening right now is that I’m here and I’m in it, and if I fight it, it just makes it worse. So surrendering to what you can’t control. Surrendering to what’s happening right now. I’m going to just be here. I’m going to be in this and it’s going to pass. You know this too shall pass. You know I will get better. I’m not going to be someone forever food poisoned. You know, I will continue to have my period until I have menopause and then I’ll go through that. But when I hate the situation, when I think it should be different, when I think I should be different, this shouldn’t be happening. Why is this happening? It does not add anything to the experience. It does not take away the discomfort. It only makes it worse.
And that’s why I feel like recognizing the, the giant unknowable, incredible, bizarre nature of human existence and life and death and being here, being on this planet in infinite space, in a universe, we do not even remotely understand barely. We have barely scratched the surface of the just our solar system. Forget like how many other universes and solar systems and you know, they’re discovering like dimensional layers and just all the different levels of existence that are going on and that we’re here, we are here and the having a sick day, having six, six days, six sick days, that’s hard to say is just an experience. It’s just a moment. It’s a little tiny splash in my life and things can feel so doom and gloom for me. You know, let’s, you know, maybe my head space and WIC where I go, I go towards, I definitely have like, I’m definitely wired towards negativity.
Um, based on my particular life journey and my own traumas and stories. I’m always ready for the shoe to drop and I’m learning to embrace when things are good. Also like surrendering to the joy, not just surrendering to the suffering, surrendering to the joy to saying I’m happy. Like this is a great moment when I’m in those moments and not just bypass them, but really take a moment and appreciate that I’m alive and in this moment I’m happy. Tomorrow is tomorrow, 10 minutes from now. It’s 10 minutes from now. But in this fucking moment and happy and the value and beauty of a moment of happiness is worth recognizing because life is made of little moments. It’s all just a series of moments collected. There’s nowhere we’re getting. There’s nowhere to go. You know, we’re, I feel like we’re all rushing towards something. So feverously running towards the future, our future selves, some future times and future things.
Some person, we’re going to be some person, we’re going to find some job, we’re going to have some accomplishment. We’re going to achieve some goals, some thing that’s going to happen that is when it’s there, it’s just going to be another moment. And we can embrace, enjoy and celebrate that right that moment. But then surrender to the fact that that moment will pass. And then there’ll be another moment and another and ultimately every moment of our life is as valuable and important as the next because that’s all you have because we’re here, we live and then we die and then we go onto that great unknown experience and adventure and story and journey and whatever that may hold, but now when I lie in bed sick and I think about all the things I should be doing and the person I’m not in, like all these blocks and issues that I have and I berate myself and I punish myself and I am missing my own life because I’m so focused on all of these things that are aren’t happening, that I’m not experiencing my life as it is, so I am missing it.
I’m missing out on this experience even when it’s a hard experience. I don’t want to miss it. I want to be in my life because what is the point? Like I said, like what is the point of life other than to just fucking experience it? We don’t know the meaning of life. We really don’t know. You know, what is the grand purpose? What is our purpose? What is my purpose? Is my purpose really a job? Is it a career? Is that really my purpose? You know, is it really accomplishing some thing or is it just my purpose is to be here and to fucking experience it and to do my best to be as fully present with all things that unfold in my life.
What about you? What’s your purpose? Why are you here? What lights you up? What shuts you down? Where are you? Where do you go when things are hard for you? Where do you go when things are great for you? How do you process and practice being fully alive? What is your understanding and belief in feelings about death? What do you believe the meaning of life is? Why are you here? Things to think about today. Everybody, thank you for joining me. I’ll talk to you soon. This is Amber Desmond. Emotional awareness coach.