I don't think a lot about death, mortality, or impermanence. I tend to think about life like I think about hiking.
Over 40% of California is suitable mountain lion habitat. Therefore, if you're ever hiking in California, it's decently safe to assume there's a mountain lion hiding somewhere within a three-mile radius.
Mountain lions generally like to stay covered and avoid human contact, so seeing one on a hike is incredibly rare. But mountain lion's are also extremely sly, sneaky creatures. If one of them wanted to attack you in the wild, you wouldn't know it until it was already on top of you.
So this leave's you with two options when hiking: you can either spend the entire time anxiously peeking through every sliver of underbrush fearing the mountain lion attack, or you can forget about the mountain lions and just enjoy the hike. And I prefer to just enjoy the hike. The truth of the matter is if the mountain lion wants to attack me, it will be able to. I can't stop it. So rather than think too much about a possibility that is out of my control anyways, I'll just soak in the hike while I can.
I read this as a meditation on the risks you choose to take when you choose certain paths - and hope I‘m not being overly simplistic.
I usually find it hard to articulate myself so your invitation to subscribe resonated with me. Perhaps I can improve by following along on your hikes. Returning to our mountain lion problem: We might not want to always ignore the risk of a mountain lion appearing. For example, we might have family counting on us coming home alive and well. So one may feel free to choose to tread a path of higher risk while another may turn back - and both may be choosing the right thing for them.
I’d like to…