We do a lot of things as parents and friends and spouses, but we don’t tech people to die, do we?
I get it.
Nobody wants to think about it.
But life and death are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other.
I know, It’s awful to consider.
But life/death taken together might be the most beautiful thing in the world too.
Work, chores, family, stress, its easy to lose the big picture in the details.
But at night sometime with my head on the pillow – I am overwhelmed by the fact of our mere existence.
Held to this rock by gravity, hurling through space at thousands of miles an hour, orbiting a giant ball of fire, and living for a glimmer of time…
You teach people to die by teaching them to live and this is about meaning and purpose.
He is right on about death being the crux of all philosophy/theology…
If I were a writer of books, I would compile a register, with a comment, of the various deaths of men: he who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live. —Michel de Montaigne, “That to Study Philosophy Is to Learn to Die”
-Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air (Amazon)