Or we may simply bow before the Mystery, in awe and wonder, without any understanding whether it has meaning at all. We are distinguished from other living beings not so much by our ability to think or even, as Ernest Becker suggests, by our knowledge that we will die while wishing to live. No, it is our sweet, poignant and unique fate to alone have the ability to achieve genuine inner peace by choosing to accept what we know is unacceptable, reaching the outer limits of the creative tension between life and death, pain and bliss, love and fear. And we discover this peace not by romanticizing death, not by prettifying it or turning it into something it is not. It is precisely because death is so unspeakable, so horrible, so unacceptable, that choosing to accept it can become our liberation, our pathway to the deepest set of experiences of which the human soul is capable.
Death is our curse.
Death, be not proud. And may you never take pride from visiting this holocaust upon us. But we, puny, cursed and blessed humans that we are, in all our sweetness and evil, brilliance and foolishness, may be forgiven for taking a bit of comfort from our ability to accept you. You may take our bodies. You cannot crush our souls.