What the Dying Teach the Living

(3) The lessons of death can be learned now. We don’t need to wait until our Lists of Human Experience are blank to embrace the wisdom of death. We have this precise moment to work on the things that give us meaning, to embrace this existence we’ve been gifted, and to tell the people we love most that we love them.

(1) Remember that Life and Death live on the same side of the same coin. Death is not idly waiting for us at the end of our journeys—no, it is always with us in the lives we lead now. Being acutely aware of this allows us to reflect on what really matters, and keeps us open to the new perspectives that Life has in store for us.

When you are mindful of the close interaction between Life and Death, these very moments will reveal themselves to be great moments of pause and reflection. Death’s act of editing your identity is Life’s opportunity to bring forth novel perspectives.

The only real question about all this finitude is whether we’re willing to confront it or not. And this, for Heidegger, is the central challenge of human existence: since finitude defines our lives, he argues that living a truly authentic life—becoming fully human—means facing up to that fact. We must live out our lives, to whatever extent we can, ... See more