« Seeing » Qaddafi’s end

The terrible images of Qaddafi’s demise on Thursday came to us, appropriately in this « connected » world, via mobile telephone.
As Libyans then lined up to see his dead body, they all had their phones ready to « save » the image. (Although I don’t have a mobile phone, I recognize this tendency via other modes of « recording, » too.)
Sometimes it seems that rather than « live » the moment we « record » it, the image valued more than the experience.
And yet: A man who had just viewed Qaddafi’s dead body told a journalist that he had always seen Qaddafi as big, strong and powerful in the TV images but now, lying there on a bloody mattress, naked, half covered by a blanket, dead, he looked small and weak. He actually « saw » him as he was at that very moment.
And what he « saw » offers a sobering thought for us all: Because we are all living, we are all dying. That’s who we are, just like Qaddafi, equally vulnerable, equally human, equally subject to and responsible for the consequences of our actions.
That’s the good news (and the bad news).
How shall we live this one fleeting, fragile life of ours?
The choice is ours, one and all, moment to moment.