If I were to ever be called a dead man, then I would most certainly take that as a compliment, for I am already having conversations with the dead; that has been the case since I first read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse at the age of sixteen.
The dead teach me; guide me; advise me; make me laugh and cry; make me feel anger and sorrow; make me feel calm and scared; they make me think and wonder.
The dead are not so dead as they are living, because their thoughts and perspectives were recorded and passed down to us, the living.
And if we feel inclined to record our own thoughts and perspectives, then we, too, may get to pass them along to the living once we die.
I realized this as I continued reading the writings of the old and discovered more than I could’ve imagined.
What a joy it is to learn from the dead and get to converse with them in the historical stream of consciousness!