Sightseeing
You must enjoy your life.
To hear Bodine read this essay, click here:
My podcast Bo-Rev has a new episode called Sightseeing, and it’s a ghost story. While the podcast is always calm science fiction for falling asleep, this one’s a little scary (but not violent, and it ends well). To make it easier to drift off, I read the story a second time in the episode, and by then you’ll know what’s coming, so the second read won’t be scary at all. You can just listen to it, and think about ghosts.
The podcast is available now: Spotify | Apple | YouTube | Bandcamp
I suspect I’ve been influenced by all the near death experiences I listen to. I can’t get over how similar they often are, like people generally report a life review, and an overwhelming sense of acceptance and peace. The insecure parts of their personality are gone, leaving only their highest self in a steady state of belonging.
Near death experiences say to me that what happens in physical reality is an adventure, a game, an opportunity, meant to shape us into better souls. And on the other side, there will be a safe place to land. This brings me incredible comfort.
But some people believe there’s more done in these happy layovers between lives, and we use that time to chart the next path our soul will take. That before we opened our eyes in this body, we selected our life’s course of events, and the people we’d share it with. For the lessons, to burn off excess karma, or because it sounded fun.
I resisted that idea for a while, which I traced back to wanting to think my life needed to be survived, and had been thrust upon me by some other, probably random, force. But then I asked myself, why would I want to believe that instead?
So let’s say it’s true, that I picked all this. My situation and relatives, my body and country and era.
Wildest thing about that, I would no longer be able to say, “this should not be happening.”
This is happening.
And what does our world, at this particular time, careening into darkness amid the sense that nothing can be done, what does it look like when we all admit this is happening.
Then I can pay attention. I can try to be useful. I can reach for the curiosity on the other side of fear.
Believing this should not be happening causes surrender, but not the kind that comes with acceptance. It’s a bitter surrender that means nothing at all can be done. It says give up and close your eyes.
But what if this whole life is a game, an adventure, and there are pieces of it that exist right now that you can enjoy, if you let yourself enjoy.
What if we chose this? What if this is the most important time imaginable to be alive?
Maybe the best thing we can do is live as if that’s true.