Once I read that losing the fear of death meant starting to live. It sounds cliché, like a waiting room magazine tip, but I think it makes sense. And deep down it makes a lot of sense. Something happened at the level of society (mestizo, westernized or colonialist) with our understanding in relation to death, I think about it a lot these last days that the media shows us a pandemic as if it were a slow avalanche of people who leave us. I have read and seen people who prefer not to live in order not to die. People who suffer. People who are very afraid. Afraid of what exactly? Afraid of Not knowing what happens next? To feel pain? To leave loved ones? I imagine there are many options. By the way, all valid. The point is that we are all going to die, we know it, but for some reason in our culture we do not make it conscious, nor do we give importance to the veneration of that which is unknown or without much light. We hide the darkness, we prefer that it does not exist and likewise we want there not to be a death, "that it happens to others, not to me, I am going to save myself from death." On November two, I went to the celebration of "Día de muertos" in Mexico, I asked a friend that lives in CDMX to recommend for some place that was authentic and special. And he described many places that might interest me. This is how I ended up going to Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, a town several hours by bus from Mexico City that has a large aboriginal population. They celebrate their traditions, trying to stick to how things were done in ancient times, respecting their connection with the divine and with their ancestors. In the place, walking around and asking questions, I met a Purépecha "taxi driver", the indigenous ethnic group of that region, who preserves the original language, in addition to Spanish. He knew all the "pantheons" (cemeteries) that had to be visited and he really wanted to join me.
We spent the whole night listening to "banda", sung in Purépecha and going around the lake, to visit each pantheon. In each place we visit, and not only that day but almost all week, families visited their dead with their favorite food, slept with them, laughed and celebrated as in a party of living people, without fear, without sadness. . With a feeling of cute nostalgia (saudade) of "we'll meet when it's our turn." A feeling of full awareness that this present state, that this physical plane, is only a step in the evolution of being.