Dalí on Death

“It is not enough to say that I constantly think of death. I bear its fabulous presence within me.” -Salvador Dalí

Is it not impossible to notice the miserable cold without sparing a thought to the warmth of the sun? Or to stand in a place so dense with darkness that you cannot even see the forms of the world without dreaming of a ray of light?

Why then is it so taboo, so reprehensible, when an individual thinks constantly of death? Would the same laws of polarity not suggest that it is impossible to acknowledge the dread-inducing unknown without an awareness of the offerings of life?

It seems to me that in our haste to outrun the inescapable, we have given ourselves over to it without so much as a fight. Perhaps we should wake up each morning and let the icy finger of death run down our spines. It seems the best way to encourage a species doomed to an awareness of their own demise to instead be blessed to the constant awareness of their own lives. Acknowledge death, as without it, it is impossible to acknowledge life, and if you choose to die having never noticed your life, what was the point.

So choose to notice. Notice the cold of a biting wind and the warmth of a cup of tea. Notice the giddiness of a first kiss and the emptiness of being lonely. Notice the smells, good or bad; the sights, terrifying or beautiful; the sounds, euphonious or jarring. In the end it hardly matters where you turn your attention, only that you notice where you’ve turned. The world has lots to offer.

It seems that by choosing a routine where you’ve falsely convinced yourself that you’ve earned a good lead on death, you’ve only accomplished a distance from life. Death cares not how far away you’ve gotten, for it knows in the end it will close in upon you.

For this reason, I ask you to stop running. Perhaps, instead, invite death into your mind. Give it a cozy room near the forefront of your awareness, and each time it reminds you of its presence, think graciously, “Yes death, I know you are here. But in this moment…so am I.”