A Moment in Time: November 1st, 2012. “Why a Book About the Dead?”
Someone recently made me that question and to be honest, I had no answer other than: “Why not a book about the dead?” I know, it wasn’t ideal to have answered with another question but I must admit I was caught off guard. So here I am, sharing an appropriate answer, precisely today, when The Dead Still Want To Live —my second book— is finally released worldwide, after a whole year of imagining, writing, translating, editing, and all that, not just once but twice.
The person who asked me the question seemed very much like my late ex-husband, the man who inspired me to create the main character of my second novel. Our world is filled with rational and skeptical minds that prefer to believe that life can last more than what it truly lasts. Having experienced so closely what was like for someone with those characteristics to live and then die, was what made me decide I wanted to write about it.
People get so intensely involved in their earthly roles, preferring to ignore their spiritual “being” and the fact that this being is the one that continues on once there is no longer a human body, that to me, it was urgent to offer those who are starting to choose a positive change, a story that reflected upon our afterlife, by using the example of a man who experienced it in the most unexpected ways.
You see, the majority of us spend so much life planning everything ahead of time. It’s the way that society —through religion, education and family—suggests that we should experience our lives so we just follow without questioning. We plan our careers, jobs, couples, the kids we’d like to have, our dream house, city, monthly budget, holidays, and on, and on. Our addiction to life’s planning is so chronic that it’s the reason why the insurance industry continues to be so profitable. We love to believe —it’s only a belief— that we’re in control of life and that we can plan and secure everything so that it stays exactly as we want it to be until…until death.
Yes, we are so afraid of our own death that we simply don’t talk about it and we don’t include it as part of our life plans, especially because there’s no insurance that can guarantee a reality that no one supposedly knows!
But why wait until we die to make the changes that we all know we should be making right now in our lives? Why keep preferring to deny the natural and inevitable? It’s precisely our denial, what makes us believe in the cruel, sad, tragic and obsolete interpretation of death that as a collective we keep reproducing through these evolving times.
Going back to the title’s question, I think it’s critical to start offering new perspectives that are no longer based on endings but beginnings, ones that may help us to accept and practice our spiritual nature, the same one which is left aside or even blocked by the “mortal” roles and planning that our ego minds successfully sell to us each day that we wake up and get out of bed.
I recently heard Deepak Chopra saying that “death made life possible,” and I had to agree with him. Why not start considering the afterlife as the next step of our lives? And why not start recognizing that besides the money we all need to live and pay our bills, we equally need the Love that opens our hearts, making us better living people, and definitely better dead ones who will be eligible to truly Rest In Peace?
Until next time and don’t forget to be love!
