I’ve been asked on several occassions why I do not have a whole lot of fear surrounding my cancer diagnosis, and even death. I’ve come to a conclusion that I felt like sharing.

I am not afraid of life or death. I have had very few fears in this life (admittedly I fear human ignorance and people’s general lack of competence more than anything). I am certain that I will have no fear in death. Death does not provide the luxury of choice, and fear ceases to be an option in death without the repertoire of human emotions to beg my existential questions.

The biggest fear that I’ve always had, which has driven a lot of what I’ve accomplished, is a fear of not living. I haven’t spent much time thinking about dying. I’ve always been afraid of wasting the boundless opportunities intrinsic to life, inherent to living.

I would even go as far as to say that my fear of not living has been so significant that it has affected much of who I am, and what I have done. Dying hasn’t been important, at all.

There is no doubt that I have spent more time ‘doing’ and achieving vs. ‘being.’ ‘I do’ or ‘I have done’ is a much fairer depiction of me vs. ‘I am’ or ‘I have been’. My core belief is that ‘the purpose of life is to live;’ everything beyond this purpose complicates a very simple truth regarding my existence.

Inherent to living is being, as I exist, but what I do as a human being only lasts as long as these few temporal moments in which I actually exist in a physical form. When I am dead I will no longer be or do. Although I am familiar with ‘doing’ as a being, I do not focus on ‘being’ in-and-of itself.

It is a basic truth that I live and breath, and that in death I shall only ‘be’ gone, as I won’t be ‘doing’ anything during that stage of my non-human-being. In other words, in life, I do not seek ‘to be’ that which eternity provides without question. It is now that I can act, and there is so much ‘to do.’

Immortality is a wicked idea that alludes humanity to a fate that shall never arrive, no matter how many depictions of continuance humanity attempts to concoct. Heaven is here, now. I’ve been living in heaven for 37 years; and I’m not dying to know what any other place aside from heaven might be like, so there is nothing to fear. In other words, I don’t think about much outside of the heaven in which I reside – the rest is an illusion.

I remember that the universe is more nothing than anything; which makes us something rare in a sea of dark energy and matter; 96 per cent of the universe is empty space. What we can see in this universal sea is only 4 per cent of the ‘known’ multiverse. I’m sure there are many other heavens within this multiverse, but I have chosen to fully enjoy the heaven that I am in today. In sum, God is mostly invisible to us, what we can see of God, here, is amazingly beautiful in its own right. On that note, I could do without humanity’s need to masturbate to its own ego by constructing idolatrous images of the divine in the image of ‘man’, or ‘woman’ for that matter. Why would I ascribe to humanity’s explanatory delusions when I can breath and live in divinity itself, right here on Earth?

Life gets even more complicated when humanity becomes normative in its approaches and perspectives, particularly when people begin to state how one ought to live. Humanity is finally beginning to recognize that morality is relative to the beliefs, values, and social constructs of any given person or group of people. It’s very difficult to regret living when a human being accepts that there isn’t any one way life ought to be lived – however a life has been lived is sufficient, and perfect, because a life has fulfilled its truth in purpose, ‘to live.’

There is no way we ought to live, but there are a multitude of ways that we can choose to live. Free will is a beautiful aspect of being human; we all too often forget that each moment is a choice – our own individual choice. There is no one else to blame for what a person does or does not do, nor how they choose to be once the cognitive dissonance of childhood dissipates and any one person transcends, and then embodies their being in accord with their own choices, and then acts accordingly.

I’ve been driven relentlessly to pursue and explore as far and as wide as possible; mentally, physically, and spiritually. Although I may have received affirmations from the external world along the way, the rewards were never enough to be my motivating force. People never give someone else what they truly need at their deepest levels, it can only originate from inside of each individual.

The forces that have compelled my choices were more often rooted in independence, making my own decisions, and relying on my internal desires in order to determine the direction I would go at any point. I would be lying to myself, and to you, if I stated that I believe that I can rely on other people. I would also be lying if I stated that I trust people to act in accord with their own words, ideas, or beliefs. It’s challenging enough to have integrity in my own life, why worry about the integrity of others when humans clearly fail again and again in this regard?

My internal compass has guided me to choose to experience the world in its various forms and manifestations, from a first person perspective. I want my own experiences, and then I’ll see what I think and feel after the fact. Fortunately, I have no clue how I might think or feel about dying once it has occurred, and I hardly want to spend the time reflecting on it once I’m dead.

My exploration of the heaven in which we live has not ended, I’m just spending more time with myself to reflect on where I am, since I can’t do much except ‘be’ given my cancer diagnosis. In other words, I can’t come up with a set of goals or tasks to take action against a disease that forces me to stop in this place, regardless of my choice, but I have chosen to reflect whilst here. I have no interest in trying ‘to do’ anything about it, and I have no interest in choosing to spend time fearing dying while living. The purpose of life is to live; dying is simply the coda.