On the occasion of this fateful date —05, June– stained by the departure of my brave father to the other world, I took the trouble to break my silence and seriously take the time to reflect deeply on what is death—literally and figuratively. Hoping in a way to appease my soul and mind. And in the other, to light the lanterns of those who are still unaware of the hidden meaning that is veiled behind this mystery (death). Even if it’s with words that border on madness, I still managed to give free rein to my thoughts without losing the logical meaning of my sentences or betraying my deepest convictions.
A fatalism that transcends cultures
From the outset, it should be noted how much most people believe in death. Others, however, doubt it. And some others believe that it does not exist strictly speaking. It is far from easy to settle the question as to who would be right. However, a question imposes itself on my pen – or at least on my mind: in what rank do I rank? I would not know how to say it. Or maybe I just don’t want to comment on that right now. But one thing remains certain: too many doubts hover around this concept that philosophers are content to call: the greatest existential failure. And that poets hoping to appease the pain of the human race call it: the afterlife.
A little jump in the past
Throughout my tender existence, a symbolic date has remained engraved in the depths of my being: 05.06.2015. It symbolizes the rebirth of my father — a convincing and convinced man — in the other world. I remember that before this unfortunate surprise, I still believed that people lived without dying. I had not, until then, taken death seriously. Believe that one day or another, he would leave me, it was not possible. And to be honest, I had never thought of that. Until that morning when, for me, everything changed. I admit it: the world had stopped spinning. And if it turned, it’s because deep inside me, I no longer had that impression. I had, that day, felt and above all understood the harshness of existence.
Everything that had meaning in my world had lost it in no time. So I had other priorities. Turn my mind to serious and deep ideas. I don’t know if I really had to say it, but I say it in good conscience: I saw many people burst into tears, but I didn’t have time to waste feeling sorry for myself. I have never understood (and I will surely never understand) why we mourn a deceased person if he goes to a world that is supposedly better than ours, as Christian logic dictates. I had no idea of the turn events were taking.
what i believe
Immersed in my world, I may have believed and still believe (not without reason) that the dead continue to live in this world. What tormented my mind was especially his last words. Everything he said to me without my understanding what was happening or what, in such a short time, had to happen: the inevitable. If I had to do it over again, I would have listened better to him in order to dig to the bottom of his reasoning. The griots know when their departure is near. Better, when they feel almost at the end of the corridor of the irreparable. From the words that preceded his departure, I confirm it straight away that he seemed to already know that he was going to join our Founder-Ancestors in the other world. Another world but which, strictly speaking, is none other than the same world in which we live.
In my opinion, the man is his thought, and the thought is the spirit. This being so, man is a spirit. And as everyone knows: the spirit is immortal. This is to say that, if man exists as a spirit, death in the true sense of the word does not exist. She would only exist in the drunken sense of the term. Because the man is still there, but somewhere else and in another form. Size precision: You never die. Life, we do not lose it. We just leave the visible towards the invisible. It’s something beyond comprehension but I never had, if my memories do not betray me, tears in my eyes because of the departure of my father. Apart from those that flowed inside me of course. I have long wondered why but, by the force of time, I believe I know the reason: I do not believe in death in the popular sense of the term.
Even if it no longer exists, I believe it is (Knowing that existing is not synonymous with being and vice versa). As we were led to believe in philosophy, “death is a passage from the level of being, to another level of being. ” Never mind. I don’t do philosophy myself, I think that’s all. I like to think that my father never died. He is no longer there, but he is there. I say it in other words: it is no longer there because we cannot see it, but it is there because we can perceive it differently. If there is no doubt. I have in me and all around me, the grandiose impression of feeling his presence. It is, it seems rightly, present-absent and absent-present. This is my deepest conviction. What I believe in. It is however true that I do not see it, so as not to take myself for a mystic. On the other hand, I feel his presence with every step I take. With every breath I breathe.
Healing our sorrows and healing through resilience
Originally, resiliency was a term widely used in physics and engineering when you took something and deformed it, elongated it by transforming it, but then it returned to its original shape. Over time, the word has been taken up wisely by American specialists in early childhood. In the process, the famous French psychiatrist Borys Cyrulnik who, in turn, used the same expression, meaning that we are not totally subject to the events that shatter us.
We have, regardless of the situation, a degree of freedom to understand what will allow us another degree of development by acting on the environment that acts on us, although our freedom is not total. To say it all in a few words: resilience consists in knowing how to resume another development after a certain psychic agony by struggling in order to put oneself in a position where one can live again as least badly as possible. According to psychiatrists
Life is 20% what happens to us and 80% how you react to it.
Resilience, the power to bounce back higher after an ordeal. | Caroline Codsi | TEDxAsfi
PS: most of these ideas in this article come from my book: A dubious existence.
For my part, my whole life finds its full meaning in resilience. In the sense that I
do everything humanly possible to see everything — or almost —
in pink even when I go through times more
dark. This is why I invite you if you care about your well-being (and it is on that it is the case) to kindly do the same.
To top it off: death took my father from me but taught me that it is not an end in itself. That this is the beginning of another existential reality. That from there I could in order to take life seriously and take my life in hand. That by all, it was the perfect time to seriously ask myself the question about my reason for being on this earth of men and to understand my life mission like any other man in the world. No one is unaware that
There is in every being human something unique that he brings to the world, and without which the world would not be completely what it is.
A quote from Alain Houel