Dead Man Walking

So I forgot to talk about the big drama that also occured last weekend (which no one apparently heard about), that being the big bomb threat that happened right at the intersection where I work. It was so close, I could look out the front of our store and see the black box that supposedly contained the bomb. Staring death in the face reminded me of an interesting post that my friend Chin made that I had been meaning to write about. In it, he writes about how he's not afraid to die while at the same time, enjoys life and would rather live than die, an idea that I share. You see, my perspective on life changed quite dramatically after I read a book on Buddhism written by the Dalai Lama way back in first year university. Basically in a nut shell one of the things the book talked about was that you should think about death a lot so that when death comes you are ready and if you are always ready for death than you can live life fuller (or something like that, its been a while since I read it). At the time, this was a completely new concept to me but it totally made sense. And the more I thought about it the less afraid I was which really did change my outlook on things. Right now I've been reading a book on bushido or way of the warrior and it also talks about the same sort of thing, that if you treat each day as your last than you treasure your time more and live life fuller, which is an idea I also try to keep. That being said, I got stuck in a conflict of sorts that day. I had the choice of staying or going home that day and I chose to stay. I knew there was a chance that the bomb was real so there I was, staring death in the face. I figure it if was my time to go, then it was my time to go. But if I had gone home, then there was no chance of anything happening to me. So there was the debate in my head. Does being ready to die mean I shouldn't try to save myself? Or should I value saving my bacon more? By staying does that mean I have a death wish? Its just like Chin says, not fearing death yet valuing life. But is that an oxymoron? If you truly dont fear death, than why if death comes knocking on your door would you rather not go? I had a brief revelation that day and I thought the answer was there is a difference between being ready to die and wanting to die, but I still couldn't get over the idea of that if you're ready to die, then if given the choice between life and death you wouldn't be hesistant to choose death, which we know is not what people would choose. Anyways, thats pretty much how I killed off (no pun intended) the 3 or 4 hours it took them to diffuse (haha, no pun intended again) the situation. I have to tell you that was one of the most surreal things I have ever seen, just the sight of the whole intersection completely devoid of people while this black box just sits in the middle, it was totally a scene out a of movie. Its a weird thing staring death in the face. The only other time I've had that feeling was in the few seconds right before my car accident. But the reality is that we stare death in the face all the time. Just doing normal everyday things like driving there is the potential there for god forbid some fatal accident. So why was this any different? Anyways, you can tell that 3 or 4 hours is a lot of time to think especially when there is nothing to do because noone is coming into your store because theres a bomb sitting in front of it. Of course, the question that really needed answering was, why the hell are we still open? :)