The Clarity of the Inevitable

Death has always appeared more understandable than life.

Not because death would be preferable to life, but because it seems to offer a clearer path.

I am very rarely ill, whether by good fortune or the accumulated result of years of caring for my health, I do not know. But for the past couple of days I have felt under the weather. An itching throat, pressure in my sinuses, a headache. Fortunately, nothing below the neck, which usually suggests nothing more than another passing virus. Still, neither motivation nor energy has been my companions these last few days.

While walking through the woods, my thoughts wandered, as they often do. I imagined what it would feel like to be told that this common cold was not a common cold at all, but something incurable. That an exhausted middle-aged physician, glasses slipping down his nose after a long shift, would quietly tell me:

“There is nothing more we can do. You may have six months. Perhaps a year.”

He stands, apologizes almost without words, and leaves the room.
It is not the sentence itself that gives me shivers. It is how ordinary I imagine it would be.

Yes, you may have six months. But you have six months.

That is what you have. That is what there is to work with. Suddenly there is no time for confusion. No time for indecision. No time for doubt. No need to participate in the endless parade of social paradoxes or the constant struggle for your attention, your health, or your happiness. There is simply you and your remaining time.

Balance your heart – Connect with your soul – Make peace – Give hugs – Sit beneath a tree.

Prepare for death.

I can think of few calmer moments than the instant the enemy breaches the city walls, when fire and steel are all that remain.

Not because of glory. Not because of pride. But because nothing remains except the present moment.

I do not want anyone to mistake these thoughts for a romanticizing of death. Death is no less real than life, and it ought not to be feared simply because it belongs to existence. Yet I am, at present, a living being, and therefore I begin from the conviction that life is greater than death.

Every living thing must.

What fascinates me is not death itself. It is the clarity that accompanies an irreversible decision. In these imagined moments, every other possibility has already been removed by fate. The illusion of control disappears, and with it much of the noise that ordinarily occupies life.

Yet the future has never been ours to possess, and its individual steps may never be reveled. Not for a nation nor a single soul.

Perhaps that is why the certainty of death can be met with the equally certain decision to live. For, in all honesty, from the very day of our birth, the enemy has already breached the city walls.

There has never been an escape. There has only ever been here. There has only ever been now. The directness of death has always been present. What difference does it make whether life ends today, in six months, or at one hundred years of age?

The aim has always been the same.

Balance your heart – Connect with your soul – Make peace – Give hugs – Sit beneath a tree.

And be prepared to die.