
I had an interesting day yesterday, finding myself involved with two separate incidents, the death of a baby and a young adult.
In these moments I’m reminded of the fragility of life and the inevitability of death for all of us.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about the importance of confronting death as I’ve been reading M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Travelled and Beyond.
Quoting Senneca, Peck highlights that “Throughout the whole of life one must continue to learn to live, and what will amaze you even more, throughout life one must learn to die.” Peck suggests that this idea is about a “fearsome learning of how to consciously give up control of our lives when it’s approprariate to do so – and ultimately hand ourselves over to God.” This is the purpose of our life, championed by the inevitability of our death.
Yet our natural and ever increasing tendency as both individuals and a society, is to do everything to maintain and cling to control of our lives, resisting the opportunity to fully embrace life by denying and avoiding death.