Not afraid of death anymore

 

 "..... Still I respect life....." 

Today is 18 year-old Ben Breedlove's funeral. Ben has become popular on the internet after he posted a video detailing his fear of death until he felt he has overcome it. He died on Christmas Day from a complications of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), an abnormal thickening of the heart's walls, which he was suffering from. I watched his video (posted here). You can tell he no longer had fear over death. He was so calm and peaceful. Underlying his calmness are the the easy-going style and the courage he portrayed in the video. They appeared effortless and just flow, and unfolded itself through his facial expressions. Understanding how he suffered from the disease had not prompted him to take his own life, though he did admit tried "cheating deaths" a few times.

Ben showed a certain degree of respect to life, which is an understanding of what cannot be changed and how it finally made sense for him to be "inward looking" to develop strength from within, which is the peace and the calmness that he eventually developed to help him cope with the challenges of the disease. Ben's gesture of calmness and peace might be similar to preparing or "getting ready for death" (at least in the mental state). Yet, we all can be calm and peaceful in all aspects of our life, not just when facing death. Being calm and peaceful is a way to deal with uncertainties in life, job losses, relationship failure, etc. We are just not perfect and need to be constantly reminded about being calm and peaceful.

The calmness and the peacefulness of the mind are powerful because they act like firewalls, and  cultivating and building them from within one's self, could deter external "threats and harm", such that over times, it strengthened the highest level of one's spiritual self, and not easily to be defeated, even though the physical self may be invaded. May I wish Ben experience peace and calm wherever he goes.