It looks like I’m through the woods for now, but when I was in the ER and the staff was trying to get me through the night, I was amazed at how peaceful and happy I felt.
Part of that peace came from a lifetime of honoring the Stoic teaching not to regard any fate as belonging to me. But the peace came even more profoundly from believing that my sense of separateness is an illusion. Albert Einstein is often credited with this quote, but I believe the true author is Daniel Christian Wahl, who said:
“A human being is part of a whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. (We) experience (ourselves), (our) thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of (our) consciousness.”
I want to always remember that the universe did not owe me life. My existence has been a free gift. I have flowered out of the depths of the universe, either as the result of an ultimate being, or of a cosmic process. Either way, why should I not trust the circle of life when my eventual tomb will be born of same creative principle as my initial womb?
One thing I know is that I want every moment from here on to be full of gratitude. No matter what my fate, I want to be grateful. I hereby resolve that when that last moment comes (hopefully, many years from now) the last utterance that passes through my lips will be the word “yes!”