Easter – a great time to think about life and death …

One of the most thought-provoking discussions in my book, Positive, is with Ian Gawler, a pioneer of mind-body medicine in Australia. We talked about the inclination in Western culture to deny death, and Ian commented:

“I do not think that we are well supported in society to include death in day to day life. Society is much more geared up to protect us from death with all sorts of things, like the preoccupation with entertainment and being busy.

“There is also an aversion to the painful job of working out how you place death in your life. How do you live knowing everybody you are related to, or in a relationship with, will die sometime? And how do you engage with people in an open and intimate way, without holding back, when you know they are going to die? We will all die one day; but we do not know when. You see a lot of parents who consider this reality with their children for a moment and just freak out and say, ‘I would rather not think about it.’ It is a very logical response; the problem is that if something does happen, most people are really unprepared for it.

“There is this notion that to be positive you have to be ‘up’ all the time, and that to talk about death is being negative. It is actually more positive to be authentic to your emotions and to face the real threat that something like cancer can pose. It is more useful for most people to say, ‘if I was to die and have a painful experience, that would be really difficult.’ There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that. In fact, in doing so it can begin a process that can free you from some of the fear and anxiety, then you can be more capable to do what it takes to survive or get well.”

This puts quite a different perspective on “positive thinking” – more than simple optimism, it describes the way we choose to live our lives – with hope and passion, or in resignation and regret.