“Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others” (Montaigne, 1946)
If we had “unlimited time available, nothing would be urgent, nothing would be important, nothing would be real” (Condrau, 1998), if you consider life without death it loses some of its intensity. It is anxiety and fear of death that drives us forward, encourages us to achieve, find meaning and make our lives one worth living.
“And can it be that in a world so full and busy, the loss of one weak creature makes a void in any heart so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of vast eternity can fill it up!” (Charles Dickens, 1847)
“Everything we love is about to die, and that is why everything we love must be summed up, with all the high emotion of farewell, in something so beautiful we shall never forget it” (Michel Leiris)