An Open Letter to the Terminally ill

So, somebody in a white coat told you that you are dying?

Life sure is a bitch, isn’t it?

Well, that depends on what you mean by “life.” And what you mean by “bitch.”

Do I feel sorry for you?

No, I don’t.

Instead of being “humane,” I would rather run the risk of adding one more person to the list of people who are of an opinion that my opinions are a cancer to the minds of those who consume whatever seemingly random statement that was produced by my pen, mouth,keyboard, or, graphic tablet … by being philosophical. Instead of feeling sorry for you, I would rather remind you of a rather obvious fact of life. Hopefully, that will add value to whatever years, months, days, or, hours, that is left of your soon-to-only-exist-in-the-minds-of-those-who-know-you life.

Here goes:

Finally, life is forcing you to be fully present, or, to at least be more present than your average civilized man; to stop worrying about the tomorrow that you might not even see; to try to squeeze life out of every single breath; to emancipate all the opinions that were imprisoned by some mental tyrant called procrastination, or, the fear of being unpopular; to finally see that there is more to life than making a living.

While we, the not terminally ill, keep promising ourselves that we will, tomorrow, do, what we promised ourselves to do tomorrow, yesterday.

While we, the not terminally ill, toil to double our chances of getting a salary increase; merely to triple the odds of us realizing a decrease in the number of people who are not envious of the number of seconds that it takes our car to reach a hundred kilometers per hour.

While we, the not terminally ill, keep telling people what they would like to hear, at the expense of what we truly feel or think, all in the name of belonging, remaining employed, remaining sexually active, increasing the number of our Twitter followers, or, decreasing the number of Facebook friends who do not “like” our status updates. (As I have once aphorized, “For the most difficult way to be retweeted,or, liked: be thought-provoking. For the easiest way: quote Oprah, Rev.Run, or, the Bible.”)

While we, the not terminally ill, sit back while some beast called civilization squeeze as much energy as it can squeeze out of us … using rough, not to mention unnecessarily long, hands called office hours … to feed its insatiable profit-obsessed appetite; before it discards those whom it cannot exploit further. A stage otherwise known as retirement.

Having said that, even we, the not terminally ill, are dying.

That is to say, life is a terminal disease. To be living is to be dying. An aphorism that I have already published is ad rem. Here goes: “With every single day that you ‘survive,’ you get a day closer to your death.”

In addition to that, an innumerable number of we, the not terminally ill, will die before you, the terminally ill, do; regardless of how near your death is. As a matter of fact, some of we, the not terminally ill, who were alive whilst you were reading the last paragraph, are no more. (That might sound insignificant, but I doubt that the thought of your death being near would have been as terrifying as it is likely to be, if every single member of the human race were to die the second you do.)

Moreover, there are countless healthy human beings who, like you, the terminally ill, are on the verge of death. People suffering from some crippling disease called old age. A disease that ultimately converts a once active person into a spectator of life. For, while getting older might come with abilities, being old comes with disabilities. As I have once aphorized, “A man who lives long enough will be a boy twice.”

The moral of this “heartless” letter? Simple.

In a word, the, at first glance, seemingly exclusive title of this letter refers to every single human being—including the so-called illiterates.

To sum up, we are all terminally ill. For, if the living aren’t killed by some terminal disease, other human beings, accidents, etc., some patient disease called the passage of time will. And that also applies to infants, nuns, firefighters, presidents, CEOs, priests, and, virgins.

Until then, L.I.P. (Live in peace).


© Mokokoma Mokhonoana (mokokoma.com + @mokokoma)