SHORTCHANGED

To die a hollow death, is what we all dread.  This is a death where we feel incomplete, unsatisfied, a stranger to ourselves, despite living as ourselves for our entire lifetimes.  We feel robbed, shortchanged.

It brings to mind the song, “Is That All There Is?” sung, back in the day, by popular jazz singer Peggy Lee.  It is about being disappointed by everything in life.  The person portrayed in the song says, none the less, that she will never kill herself over it because she knows that death will be a disappointment as well.

Our feeling alienated, shortchanged, and disappointed in life is because we are not in touch with what does not feel alienated, shortchanged, and disappointed, the Atman.

“Is That All There Is?” was inspired, by the way, by a Thomas Mann story entitled “Disillusionment.”  The song and the story differ in that the narrator in Mann's story ceases being disillusioned when he sees the sea for the first time, which in Vedanta is what it is like seeing the Atman for the first time.