What is it about contagious diseases that we have so much primal fear over?

As we religiously attempt to sanitise and set ourselves apart and avoid all contact with contagion, we do whatever we can in the hope that we may be spared from contamination and its consequences.

We cling on to this hope to remain disease free.

It preoccupies us, shaping our everyday decisions and choices to keep ourselves clean. We scrub and sanitise everything we touch. We chorus: “Que sera, sera”.

But what if it’s not a matter of if, but when? What if the effects of sickness are so prevalent that they will be experienced regardless of how we quarantine ourselves?

What hope do we cling onto then? What if there is a much more lethal disease? One that lurks deep within, growing wickedness in our hearts?

How do we quarantine ourselves against ourselves?

What if it’s not a matter of if, but when?

Even if this disease cannot be ultrasounded to be seen, we still experience its effects outside the body. We face a foe more fearsome than any other disease known or unknown – death.

No matter how we sanitise ourselves, death will crawl past all our quarantines to visit us. No lab has yet found any vaccine for it. It’s not a matter of if, but when.

Even if we defeat cancer and every known disease, and live healthy lives without sickness, death still awaits with its cruel mandibles.

So what hope is there then? Who can defeat this merciless foe who has never lost a fight, who relentlessly assaults us the moment we are born into the octagon of life where no tap-outs can spare us from the merciless slaughter?

Where do we place our hope in then? Perhaps the only thing left to do is to numb ourselves with noise and smoke from the frenzied crowd and squeeze out whatever rancid breath we have before we choke to death.

We face a foe more fearsome than any other disease known or unknown – death.

What if you discovered, through reading the archives of history, that this foe has been defeated before?

If there was a way to subdue death and its lethal sting, would we not desperately seek it?

Some might have found the Way, some might have not. For those of us who have, would we not follow it scrupulously? And for those of us who have not, would we not then feverishly desire it?

If we could be immunised, perhaps not from death, but from the effects of death, what would these vaccinated lives look like?

Losing our fear of the consequences of death, how much more would we love? Shall we not therefore love fearlessly?

If not now, then when?

This article was first published on Ken’s Facebook page and has been republished with permission.