What, about living, appeals to you? -- or is it just that you fear consequences and death?
In our heart of hearts, each of us holds the decision to live or to die, just as we hold innumerable beliefs about the kinds of experience we are willing to have.
This decision is not an intellectual one, but an emotional one. After all the reasons are taken into account, there is a feeling -- the bottom line: life or death.
If we examine our decisions in life honestly, we may find that we make decisions to which we are not 100 percent committed. We may have second thoughts, an internal argument about our decision -- and we may or may not be aware of what those second thoughts are. Often, we sense them, fleetingly, and then override them or deny their existence. Often, we simply decide in spite of our second thoughts.
To do so does not make them go away; rather, it only leaves the internal argument in place, sapping our energy, holding our attention, and weakening our intention in subtle ways outside our direct awareness.
Second thoughts affect our emotional state, filter our perception, and color our judgment; they always seem legitimate. They change our experience and even our bodily functioning -- for, the body’s processes are constantly shifting with our emotions -- the fast heartbeat of fear, the stiffening of anger, the wilting and shrinking of sorrow -- and the softening and warming of tender love.
In a way, the drama of life reflects our struggle with our second thoughts. Sometimes, we may lack direct awareness of our second thoughts and blame conditions or people around us for our experience of struggle -- particularly when those people or conditions align with our second thoughts. Our sense of powerlessness corresponds directly to the sense of complication we experience when we have second thoughts. Complication is tiring the same way as second thoughts are tiring. So our power in dealing with people or conditions is reduced by the secret agreement we have with them being the way they are. Still, many people unjustly blame "outside conditions". The decision to live or to die is also subject to second thoughts.
Life and death are more than biological matters. We have heard of people who languished and died of a broken heart -- and of people who would rather die than change their beliefs or way of life. Some people live only because of second thoughts about death! Are we heartened by life enough to continue? And might that be the secret to our decision whether or not to choose life?
