Meditation on Death

"Lebennach dem Tode - Wer Gründe hat, an sein 'Leben nach dem Tode' zu glauben,
muß seinen 'Tod' während seines Lebens ertragen lernen" ***
(Friedrich Nietzsche Fragmente 1[8])

When we speak of death, we have in mind two kinds of death: death in life and death after life. While we are alive, we avoid speaking or thinking about death, as though it were not part of life; we live as if we were immortal.

Death after life—as far as we can conceive of it while still alive—can only be imagined, and we begin to imagine it when we start to feel old, when death draws near. Then reality begins to seem unreal, and everything we have experienced up to that point loses its tangibility, its coherence, and its shape. We begin to realise that the life in which we believed no longer exists—indeed, that it never truly existed—and that the only genuine reality is death: the everlasting end of all illusions, all hopes, and everything, great or small, that we have managed to achieve within the span allotted to us.

In this way, we learn to die, just as we once learned to live.

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***

Life After Death. — Whoever has grounds to believe in his own "life after death" must learn to endure his own "death" during his lifetime.

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