I…have followed in the footsteps of my many-times-great-grandmeres by offering to others the wisdom that mortality is not a thing to fear, but rather a blessing to accept when it comes to us in the fullness of time. – “The Mysteries“
Every year on this day, I write about the inevitability and goodness of Death. Every year on this occasion, and in innumerable other essays, tweets and statements, “I have reminded my readers that every single thing in the Cosmos is mortal, and will pass away in its time. [Organisms and empires alike] rise, thrive, decline, and fall, to be replaced by younger ones which then decline and fall in their time…crumbling into dust and passing first into memory, then legend, and eventually beyond the horizon of sentient knowledge. The wheel turns inexorably, and all there is to say about it has already been said countless times; there is, I think, little point in saying it again…” And so, as I did earlier this year and will again on Friday and next week, I present a collection of statements I’ve previously made on this topic:
That experience of being a stranger in one’s own community, of being treated like a living oracle, like a weird visitor back from the underworld with divine wisdom to share…that, I think, is the experience which defines the old. – “Let There Be Dark”
Western culture’s impending demise is being driven by tyrants whose destruction of freedom and justice is enabled by the masses willing to give them any power in exchange for their impossible promises to delay death, both personal and cultural, just a little longer. – “Eros and Thanatos”
Death is what gives life meaning, and fighting excessively against it is as childish and futile as the behavior of a toddler who refuses to let another child take his place on the carousel once his ride is done. – “Thanatopsis”
People believe what they want to believe, and some of them even seem wedded to the delusion that they can indefinitely avoid this riverbank, though none ever has since the dawn of the world. – “On the Riverbank”
When [the Reaper] at last come to collect me it will be a rendezvous rather than a capture, a meeting (whether anticipated or unexpected) of old friends rather than the cornering of a terrified animal by a hunter who has never in the history of the world ever failed to run down his prey. – “A Necessary End”
Sex and death are our constant reminders that for all our pretensions we are still animals; no wonder those uncomfortable with that fact try to disguise and sanitize both of them, to hide them from the children and speak about them in whispers, to bind them in legal codes and bury them under layers of ritual. – “Even This Shall Pass Away”
Death is the one great universal experience, the sacrament shared by every dynamic thing from the most ephemeral of microbes to the stars and galaxies themselves, the inescapable conclusion to every form of existence not already dead in its immutability. – “The Dance of Death”
You will die, and so will I, and there is absolutely nothing any of us can do about it…yet vast numbers are so obsessed with this simple and indisputable fact that they waste much of their time on Earth in a struggle they absolutely cannot win. – “The Day of the Dead”
