Montaigne said that as our birth brought us the birth of all things, so in our death is the death of all things included. But with that in mind, why would I trouble myself with death if it’s not me who died—it’s the world that ceased to exist? And shouldn’t those rather laugh at the end of this spectacle who cried at the beginning, especially if they might have already outlived their purpose?
Here, in the Western world, death has a particularly bad press—if mentioned at all—but you can’t avoid it if you ask about a happy life, since, to follow Ovid in Metamorphoses, we should all look forward to our last day: no one can be called happy till he is dead and buried (from The Essays of Montaigne—Volume 03 by Michel de Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton). But sometimes, just like everyone else, I ask myself: Was—or is, as I’m still alive—my life a happy one? The problem is, I’m not even sure what that actually means—a happy life. I would say adequate. It’s like the dust on my desk—sometimes I wipe it off, but most of the time I get along.
We value human life exactly because it’s so frail and because it eventually ends—because of death. What would happen to that respect once death was gone?
hidden pilcrow 