smile, it's all falling apart :)

I spent this last week hiking in and around Zion National Park. The mountains and mesas of lower Utah are mesmerizing, but one particular feature slapped me with a dose of reality: the rubble and boulders that litter the valley from millions of years of rockfalls and erosion.

I was struct with the sense of impermanence that is seamlessly weaved into all of reality. Even those towering Zion mountains will eventually be reduced to rubble under the unstoppable force of Time. If those peaks are no more than rubble-in-waiting, what does that mean for our lives?

The exact same thing, the way I see it. But that need not be a depressing realization; quite the contrary. Impermanence and Death are the foundation of Life, and being death-aware is life-positive, not life-negative.

Death awareness is a great tool, I've found, in decision-making; It instantly eliminated the bullshit and puts you right in front of the sweet nectar that Life is. Say you were to die in 57 days, what would you continue doing, do more of, and stop doing? This question is surprisingly easy to answer, more difficult to answer honestly, and perceptually hard to live.

Zion's summits and valleys, our bodies and our lives, and all around us is be falling apart. This much is true, and there is tremendous beauty in it. Keeping the cannonball on your chest is optional.

Without the insatiable process of erosion, Zion's majestic canyons and crags would've never formed. Without death, life is impossible. You own nothing, you're just borrowing everything, including your body, for 0 to 100 years (a microscopic quantity of time).

Embrace it.