How to Deal with the Fact that Everyone We Love Will Die Someday
To stomach the hardest fact of life, we must put it in its proper context
There’s obviously a degree of pragmatism built into the human psyche, which enables us to carry on each day while somehow completely ignoring life’s largest and most alarming truths. Yes, everything is meaningless, and we find ourselves floating about on a speck in an infinite universe, and we have no real idea how any of this came about, yet, for a time, one can manage to focus all their attention and care on the fact that they’re running late to their morning shift at the grocery store. But every now and then these truths sweep over our awareness, and in an instant, the whole world becomes unrecognizable.
I don’t find the saddest fact of life to be that we will all die someday, but it is something related to it: There will come a day when each of us will be separated for all eternity from everyone we love. It immediately turns every ounce of love I feel into fear. Chains, invisible and unbreakable, are dragging them all away from me with each tick of the clock, and I’m completely powerless to do anything about it. I can’t foresee when or how it’ll happen, but I’m unfortunate enough to have certain knowledge that it will eventually happen.
