Why Death Is Not the Answer to Life’s Problems

By Tania Ho
 
Nov 2, 2018
 

When I was 25, my dad left the world without a proper goodbye. The first question was always why. Why did you leave, Dad?  An answer I knew I would never receive.

Ten months after my dad passed, I realized I had a second question when I was dealing with the root cause of my eczema. Why did you leave me here, Dad? Why didn’t you bring me along?

Don’t get me wrong. I would never have the courage to leave this world the way he did. Life is too precious. But since then, I understood partly why my dad left the world he did. My dad was not afraid of death, you see. But he was afraid of suffering. He wanted to be free of all the sufferings he was experiencing.

Being alive is hard work sometimes. When things got tough, and when I was crying my eyes out, I would wish that I was dead so I didn’t have to deal with Life. Death was considered as a peaceful sanctuary, where all of Life’s problems would just melt away.

That was my belief until I did a 5-day intensive family constellation workshop with Leslie Nipps and Tammy Hayano in October 2018. Without going into details of my personal constellation, I now realized that I was wrong.

I confused Death with inner peace. I confused Death as a place without sufferings and problems. I confused Death as Freedom.

I had been too focused on the destination called Death that I forgot the journey called Life.

Yes, we will get there eventually, some way or another. There is no denying in this.
But aren’t we too focused on staring at Death sometimes that we forget to look around and appreciate something called Life?

And being alive is Freedom. We have a free will to make choices and decisions every day.

When we truly recognize ourselves as the co-creator of our lives and step into the full power of our whole being, we are free to live the life that we want. When we get to express our soul’s voice and our true self, that is, to me, Freedom.

Life is hard sometimes, yes, there is no doubt. Life can suck big time. Life can be full of dangers, challenges, heartaches, pain, struggles and frustrations.

But Life can be a celebration too. Life can be fun, meaningful, and soul fulfilling.

Life is where we can enjoy a deep stillness and peace in the darkness while lying under the starry sky, feeling, admiring and being cradled by the vastness and expansiveness of the Universe.

Life is where we can look right into each other’s eyes and realize that we have more in common and more connected than we ever know consciously.

Life is, despite all the hurts and traumas that we have been through, where we can make amends and forgive ourselves and others, practice compassion and unconditional love.

Death, on the other hand, is just a gateway into somewhere we know nothing about. Imagine walking through a door to enter into a different space. Death is just that doorway; beyond Death perhaps there are a new set of challenges and life purposes waiting to be fulfilled – who knows?

Leslie shared a quote during the workshop from Bert Hellinger, founder of Family Constellation. “Life is not better or worse than Death. It’s just what is available to us now.”

Life is what we’ve got right now. We will all reach Death sooner or later. So take this time to look at Life, stare at her beautiful face and feel the support from our family, friends, ancestors and the Great Mystery of Life.

Funny I never thought of this before. I’m sure my Dad would be happy to see me living my life to the best that I can.

I can imagine him saying, “We’ll meet eventually, but not now.”

Death is not the answer to our problems. Life is.