Here’s a challenge; I want you to believe what I’m about to tell you. Not just hear it, not just understand it, but believe it. It’s a fact that you already know to be true but have never been able to fully accept. And it’s this; you are going to die. You, the person listening to me right now, are going to die.
It’s difficult even to imagine isn’t it? Take a moment and try to picture what it’s like to not exist. You can’t do it. You’re imagining darkness, black. But there will be no black. There will be no color, because there will be no you to perceive it, and your mind recoils from that idea. It’s simply unable to conceive of its own non-existence, and so, it concludes, that it’s impossible, that you’ll live forever, but you won’t.
All things end. All motion slows. All heat becomes cold. Life is an eddy in that current of entropy, a brief chemical reaction that lights up the darkness, and then, it’s fuel spent, dissipates back to nothing. Just like you will.
Your body is a marvelous intricate machine built out of millions of interconnected, fragile systems. And as you age, each begins to slowly, but surely, deteriorate and break down. When one fails, a doctor may be able to repair it. But at some point, there will be too many interlocking failures to proceed. And like a cascade of dominos your joints, your eyes, your heart, your lungs, your memory, your entire body will fail. It will happen.
And while it’s difficult to hear this truth, it is essential that you accept it. Because every second that goes by in which you don’t, is a second of your precious and finite life that you risk wasting.
So I’m going to say it once more, and this time try as hard as you can to believe me. You, yes you, will die. And there is nothing you can do to stop it.
