The experience of death, in any form, gives us a sense of finality. A feeling we need in order not to squander the time we have left in the world as we’ve found it.
A day earlier, I learned about a neighbour who had recently died. His death notice hung on the wall of the house where I spent my childhood. This man, whose name I can’t even remember, was a fixed point somewhere on the map of my world. He knew my father—a cold, brutal man who, in part, made me who I am.
Is death the end? For the living, certainly. For the faithful, it is a hazy hope that their pain will someday, somewhere fade away, and that they will still, somehow, somewhere, remain themselves, walking through a world without suffering.
The man who died was one of the few who came to my father’s funeral. One of the few who drank with him and knew him better than I ever could.
Some things in this world remain unchanged. It’s people who end—and with them, ordinary human confusion. We do not know where we are going. Beneath the façade of ambition, the struggle for survival, the endless road reveals itself as a race—towards the finish line, which is death.
17-10-2025