By Nuwanka Kottegoda
This is my first column and I feel duty bound to make an attempt to explain the curiosity between the title and my purpose as a writer.
The Art of Dying is a youthful foray into band naming – unfortunately I never formed it. It was a story I told myself, which never lived in the structures we call reality but stayed a dream. Now, here I am, lying in bed some 18 years later far removed from rural Nova Scotia, in Muscat, Oman, curious to try and breathe life into it once more as a title for this column.
Born to die
It is said we are born to die and life is just the journey to get there. I am not opposed to that idea; in fact, I am quite resigned to it. However, what I will not accept is the notion that death or loss should be a solely sad affair.
Important event
I am terrible at loss, so I must choose to see death as something else. It’s interesting to note that there has never been a time in recorded human history where it was an unimportant event. Is it because of what life means to the living or for where we are headed next?
Delve into truth
With this column I aim to delve into the truth of what makes us who we are and the structural principles that I believe make a good life. If in fact we are all pieces of art, then, at death it is the first and only time the artist will allow its full work to be examined. For can we ever know a person until the body’s journey ends? The tapestry of life unwinds into time, as memories and lore. Then again if we live as an infinite number of versions of ourselves in all the moments we interact in, then what is the baseline for observation of art or a person? Which reality are you? This inevitably points to the soul.
Value of 3
If we examine the soul, does it present as the Duncan MacDougall experiment would suggest, as a physical essence that weighs 21 grams, a notion that lends quite nicely into many religions’ affection for the number 3. “In ancient times, the number 3 was considered as the auspicious and the perfect or magic number. It is also aligned to the pursuit of wisdom. In numerology, people belonging to number 3 are considered to be sincere, understanding and spiritual” (Net). My beliefs through a personal relationship with God would confirm the value of 3 spiritually and mentally, but we can revisit that in future articles. Back to the initial thought – If not a physical presence is it a more intangible thing, the woven fabric of a person’s experience over eternity? Or is it just the memory preserved in the art that is a life?
The key
I believe we are made whole, and a true self. Our journey is to live that self to the fullest potential possible. The world will interfere, and interrupt but at the end of the day your ability to come back to the soul, the self, the serenity, that is the key to being you.
Truest self
If we are in fact and in truth ‘a soul’ as I stated above, then is this process of life “the art of dying,” is a fully lived life as your truest self, a fully charged battery for the next or perfect place to rest for eternity? The artful nature of knowing thyself must be the key to the door to exit to the totality of heaven.
*The author Nuwanka Kottegoda is a spiritualist caught in an entrepreneur’s world. He has learnt to deftly balance himself between material life and spirituality. Comfortable in both the roles, this Oman born, Canadian Sri Lankan had imbibed the values of three cultures to form a special understanding of his own. He changes costumes with consummate ease as he traverses between a world of investments and entrepreneurship to the realm of spirituality that borders on esoterism.
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