Reflections on Life & Death

By Vipin Kumar Tripathi

One thing we may know with certainty about the future is that we will die, one day or the other, leaving this world behind us.

Recently, I lost my brother-in-law and some friends. I felt pained. This feeling of pain I consider to be life.

There are two kinds of life that we live. One is the life of the body. Our heart beats, our lungs pump air, we breathe, we see, we walk. This is the life of the physical body. But there is another life. This is the life of feelings or sensitivity. When you see a person in pain, you feel their pain—this is sensitivity, a sign of being alive.

Just as there are two kinds of life, there are also two kinds of death. The first kind of death is the death of the physical body. This happens just once in one’s lifetime. When a person stops breathing and his pulse ceases, we say that he has died. But there is another type of death also. This happens when a person, crippling his own self, ceases to feel the pain of others and becomes insensitive to their suffering. One may be physically alive but actually ‘dead’.

We all have to face the death of our body one day, but may we never have to face the other sort of death—the death of sensitivity. Being pained at the pain of others and trying to do at least something to address it is a sign of being truly alive. Such sensitivity connects one to the entire cosmos. It is such sensitivity that makes us truly human.

There is an important point that I would like to stress here: Prejudices about others—based on things like their ethnicity, community, gender, religion, geographical location, and so on—easily cripple one’s sensitivity and rob one of feelings for the pain of others and thereby steal one’s own humanity. So, may we see the person in front of us without stereotypes, without prejudices, as fellow human beings in their totality. May we preserve our sensitivity towards others and thereby truly be alive. May we remember that those who do so make themselves dearer to the whole world.

(The author is associated with Sadbhav Mission, which focuses on issues such as education and communal harmony. He can be contacted on tripathivipin@yahoo.co.in)