Imago
Perhaps the deepest reason why we are afraid of death is because we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal unique, and separate identity—but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our "biography", our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit cards... It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?
Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. Isn't that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?
--Sogyal Rinpoche
IT'S EVENING. LISA HAS PUT Maggie to bed. She opens a bottle of wine and pours us each a glass. She hands me mine and sits down across from me, glass and dayplanner in front of her. She'll be going to bed after this but I still have to go out and walk the dog and have my nightly nightcap with Frank and then come back here and try to get in another hour of work.
Lisa sits quietly and sips her wine. She needs to be pushed and she wants to be pushed, so I give her a push.
