12 - Coda

Summary

There is nothing new under the sun, and so much of what this book contains is nothing new, only perhaps a somewhat different and more systematic way of thinking about what is already known. It’s impossible to develop any collective majoritarian default method for how best to deal with death on an individual level. Thinking carefully about how we live – in preparation for how we will die – is an ongoing and iterative process, an opportunity to be seized rather than postponed. Of course, no one of healthy mind actually wants to die, and it is normal and necessary to avoid dwelling continuously on mortality, but persistent denial of the undeniable fact of mortality harms more than it helps. Pausing from time to time to contemplate death may not make its impending arrival any more welcome but, like developing calluses from hard manual labor, it can toughen up the emotions a bit. Without occasional labor of this sort, the result is not calluses but painful blisters.