Dying Consciously
5 min read
1/10/25
I wrote the following string of thoughts a couple of weeks ago when I felt a pull to start a blog. And today I woke up to the news of Jane Goodall’s transcending. Somehow I never thought about her mortality, never worried when she might go as I do with so many around me. Somehow in my mind she would always be around. The fact that she was 91, still learning and teaching, full of fire and passion was proof that her time here will never end. Growing up with a household name like hers, like Steve Irwin, I never thought I’d see this day coming, let alone one shortly after writing the following. I don’t think I realised how much her work inspired me in my own journey through life and death until now. It inspired my choice to see the gorillas in their natural habitats in Uganda, to learn more about her work in Tanzania where we transited, to experience the raw and natural form of life when a cheetah hunted a gazelle before my very eyes in the Masai Mara.
If you look at the thesaurus I’m sure you’d find her name under the word, Hope. How can someone who has seen what she has, still believe in hope as the highest power one can have. It’s easy to fall into a cynical point of view when we look at the state of the world around us. And that’s what baffles me, that through her eyes and seeing what she has, hope has always remind the highest power. If it’s one thing Steve Irwin taught me about his death was that when the world loves you enough, you never truly die. She has planted seeds of hope in so many hearts. May these tears we shed now water those seeds into blossoms and forests that we can all walk through one day; knowing that every living thing is loved and respected, a world with kindness, a state of Oneness and Nothingness with all.
Silverback gorilla in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (Uganda). Original photo by gur simran kaur (ramkeli).
24/09/25
Living consciously in the eyes of loss.
In a time where everything seems to require a second thought on if we should use it; the latest I heard was on military AI, and some of the everyday apps we use for music. What has the two got to do with each other you’d think? But that’s the world we live in today: one that lacks that consciousness, humanity and every tragedy is a playground for technological progress at the price of lives and data. It’s all quite bleak. Not to mention, how can I grieve one life, when there are multiple genocides happening around me? Everything overlaps with everything overlaps with everything.
But through the eyes of grief which is just how you view life now (if you’ve ever lost someone dear or immediate to you), a simple act of choosing a less poisonous/more conscious app or organisation is not so straightforward. Our beloveds used to have an account with said Big Music App, their playlists, “following” them, etc. And while being on these apps, it’s like they’re still around, listening to the playlists they have created for a moment in their life. Choosing a different platform today feels like you’re choosing life without them. A life that they haven’t been a part of. And that goes for all Big App names: communication, social media, bank accounts, book accounts, subscriptions, everything.
Shortly after Sevak died, I read Jane Goodall’s The Book of Hope. It was an impulse buy at a bookstore, just looking for a way to feel hopeful again when everything felt quite the opposite. And in the first couple of chapters she wrote about grief and how with the passing of her then husband, she felt that was the first true moment of hopelessness. If Jane Goodall could feel hopeless the one time in her life because of loss, then so could I. I was relieved with that validation. I remember in the immediate days and weeks and months really after Sevak died, I remember just consuming and using things so wastefully. I didn’t care about single use items or plastic bags or unethical corporations at that time. All I kept thinking was, Sevak used these things and he still died. So what good is trying to live a better and more conscious life if you’re going to die the same anyway?
Of course 4+ years on now, there’s a little more rational to these thoughts. But there still isn’t. The world around us is burning and yet choosing to live in this society means having to be part of many capitalist cycles. So how simply can I change my messenger or email apps when there’s signs of his life still in them?
I know he exists beyond his phone number or email address, or music playlists. But I was there when we chose our numbers together, I remember our cringey kid emails before we figured out our grown up emails and showed it to each other with such shameless pride, I know the albums that remind him of heartbreak and love. In the digital sphere, he is immortal.
So here we are now. Where trying to live consciously isn’t only about paper straws choices anymore, but about the digital choices we make. It’ll probably be something else tomorrow.
We are seeing people circling back to physical media, CDs, MP3s, iPods, single-function-devices, writing letters, etc. Which inspired this idea, of going back to blog posts because even the way we write has been shaped by a limited character count for captions on social media. The past dictated a pace of life which we could keep up with. We used to live in a time when sustainability and consciousness was just how life was, not something you’d seek out, because life wasn’t as convenient or digitally accessible as it is today.
Perhaps like Jane Goodall’s biggest lesson, hope IS the key to sustainability and living/dying consciously. It’s not prescriptive to what you need to do, expect to do what you can with hope in your heart.
I recently started a tiny (Bokashi) compost on our home balcony. It has been both a terrifying, yet trusting process. Observing that destruction and creation of life, not as separate entities but rather hand in hand, to surrender and let nature do its thing, that everything resets in the end. From feeling so hopeless and wasteful to today starting a compost, I’d say I’ve come a long way. Most days I still feel wasteful and hopeless, but I also feel hopeful now. And while it’s all still quite self serving, it’s also not. Perhaps this compost has helped the seed in my heart which I felt died with Sevak, grow through the soil again.
Another small win is finding a new web browser called Ecosia, a “conscious” search engine that helps to power the environment and your privacy. And my next adventure: trying to remember all my passwords so I can switch to that.
x gsk
