The Living Dead

We say that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say this we think of that hour as situated in an obscure and distant future. It does not occur to us that it can have any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance".

-Marcel Proust, In Search Of Lost Time

How true is that. Uncertainity is the only certain thing about life. Yet we love money. Perhaps it's ok to love money but it's not ok to be obsessed over it. Cos if you start loving money too much that obsession will start loathing your life. It'll make you forget who you are and your purpose on Earth. It'll eat you up even without your knowledge and it could be too late to get back your life again. I'll give you an example.

I know this elderly lady. She's very very very rich but she doesn't spend a cent, no not even on herself. She is always out to grab someone else's money or survive on someone else's bread. It's so revolting to even come across her but unfortunately she's someone we know and cannot completely discard from our lives. Anyways my point is that she is money hungry and that hunger grows by the second. She prays at temples to acquire another new house (she already has about 4 houses but don't live properly in any). She wants more and more money for herself and for her children but for no one else. She doesn't give a cent to someone in need, she doesnt even buy a coffee for herself and she doesnt go out unless it's free. She tells me that she prays everyday to God asking for money (I can see God sitting in a corner taring His hair out in frustration). She even goes to an atrologer to ask what her future financial status is, hahahahahaha how funny! Future? What about the life she's wasting right now while dreaming of more and more money? When will she ever start living instead of rotting in greed? Whenever she speaks it's only about money and nothing else. I bet her eyes have $ signs instead of an iris and she'd probably love to get a job at a mint. Her house is not a home, her dinner is never cooked, her family is not close-knit and most of all she's not living...she may call it as her kind of living but I find it ridiculous and a disgrace to human life. I call such people the living dead. I know I have no right to judge but this kind of life has to be worse than death and even worse than a poor man's life. What will happen to all that money when she's physically dead? Is she going to take any of that with her? In the end she hasn't lived at all, cos death has become her.

Looking at her I thank God that I have been given the gift of Living..and that I'm not one of the dead, walking this Earth in greed. Don't be too attached to something that you can't enjoy now 'cos what's the point in loving it if you can't enjoy it.

~~From greed comes grief, from greed comes fear; he who is free from greed knows neither grief nor fear.

-The Buddha.