We are always dying. Even today, 50 billion pieces of you died. Those 50 billion cells of yours that died today always knew this day would come. Their death was by design, programmed in the beginning. Your recently departed cells didn’t resist death. Not only did they accept it triumphantly, they also made sure even their ending would benefit your body. Before their death, they sent out a ‘Come get me!’ message like a dying soldier fulfilling their final duty by raising a beacon.                                                             

This process is called Apoptosis—a form of cellular self-removal that is precise, deliberate, and necessary. Cells carry the internal molecular machinery for this process, including the signals which actively call in immune cells to come clear their dead bodies. It’s a message that says: “I’m ready—please remove me.” Their calm acceptance of death is strange, almost beautiful. This miraculously intricate system’s only aim is our well-being. We are relying on death to live.

Systems remain healthy not by preserving everything, but by continuously discarding what no longer serves. Without cell death, we would have stubs instead of nimble fingers. Losing things to death may be the only way for us to thrive. 

There are parts of us that we sacrificed in order to survive in this world—innocence, openness, trust. To be alive is, in some sense, to stand on the burial ground of former selves. Survival is that sacred. 

Don’t forget all the deaths that happened for your survival and well-being. Make them count. Thrive for their sake. Be reborn and rise from their ashes. Think about all the things you lost and sacrificed to be alive today. Have a moment of silence and appreciation in honour of those deaths. 

But sometimes we refuse even though holding on destroys us. I think about those stubborn cancer cells in my father’s body that eventually ate him up. Why couldn’t those cells just let go and sacrifice for the greater whole? Why were they attached so much? And then the question turns: Where in me does the same refusal live?

The moment I saw my father’s cold, unmoving dead body, a deep fear of death was ingrained in me. I might not think about passing away any time soon but I worry about illness more than I should. I’ve been living with a paradigm that in any moment, life-crushing illness could happen to me or my loved ones, utterly ruining the happiness and peace I worked so hard to achieve. 

This obstinate belief survived as long as I have. Whether or not it’s true, I would like it to be gone since it’s harming the greater whole. Like bodily waste or cancerous cells, this paradigm needs to be out of my system. Form comes from removal. A Goddess emerges out of a marble chunk when she loses all the unnecessary elements. I kill this paradigm. I eat it up and recycle it into something better for me. I need to die a little to live better.

Knowing this, I started looking at myself differently. I look into the mirror and think about all the cells that accepted their death gladly for my survival. I say thank you to those cells for saving me from cancer. And I say hello to all the newborn cells in my body. My new cells know nothing about illness or tragedy. They are innocent and pure. They take the life experience as it is and when it’s time they will go boldly and courageously. I’d like to live like that. Because like them, I’ve only got one chance at life.