Advice from Rumi: Die Before You Die

What does this mean?

Lemons and berries like these at Evergreen come from flowers, parts of which fall off to enable the fruit to form. Like fruit, we must let go of the dead stuff in order to live.

What does, Die before you die mean?

This saying is attributed to the highly acclaimed woman Sufi mystic Rabia al-Adawiyya, who lived in the 8th century. It was also used by the well-known Persian poet Rumi, who came along 500 years later, in the 13^th century.

We can experience an element of shock on first hearing it. Death is high on the list of things we fear, so the idea of dying before we’re forced to seems counter-intuitive. Run away from death as fast as you can is more like the motto we live by!

As if to confuse the issue, we have famous people like Virginia Woolf writing in A Room of One’s Own:

Whatever happens, stay alive. Don't die before you're dead.

Confused now, I sit at my desk and try to find a way to combine these two suggestions, one advising I die before I die and the other advising I don’t die before I’m dead.

Which one should I follow?

Perhaps I could integrate both suggestions into my life.

In writing, Don’t die before you’re dead, Virginia Woolf is advising me to wake up in the morning alert, aware, fully present. A dead body can’t respond. A live one can. If I’m not prepared to find a way through the maze of daily happenings heading my way, I may as well be dead.

In writing, Die before you die, Rabia al-Adawiyya and Rumi are implying that there are parts of me that I can choose to let die before I physically die. According to them, it won’t kill me to let some things die that I consider an integral part of me.

When these two sayings are combined, they say this to me:

Let go of the dead stuff so you can really live until you really die.

Ah, that makes sense.

My skin knows this already.

When I was younger, my skin let go of the dead layer of itself every 28 days. Now that I’m over seventy, it can take 60 days for this amazing transformation to take place.

Imagine if my skin clung to the dead bits instead of letting them go. By now I’d be twice the size I am. I’d be walking in a heavy, ponderous way reminiscent of a main character in a zombie movie. I’d look like one of the Walking Dead, or perhaps one of the Undead.

That’s what I’m like when I cling to bits of myself that are really dead, but I’m often too attached to them to let them go, despite Rabia al-Adawiyya’s and Rumi's sincere urge for me to do exactly that.

So, what dead stuff am I dragging around?

Regular readers know what I’m about to say, but I’ll say it again because I need reminding.

The dead stuff I’m dragging around are old, wizened, repetitive, habitual, stagnant, stuck-in-the-mud-of-the-past thoughts and emotions.

Like my wise skin, if I want to live before I die, I need to let go of the dead stuff so I can live in the fresh-skinned moment that is Now.

With love, Marlane