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Whenever I look at a newborn child, I ask myself: which is better—that I should remain here forever, or that I should leave and a new possibility enter the world? And always, in the eyes of that infant, in children’s smiles, and in the passing years that gradually settle upon my face and deepen my eyes, I find my answer without hesitation. I know it is good that I will leave so that a new life may have the opportunity to experience the beauty and wonder of existence. It is good that I will finally be able to pass from this world so that a child, with curious eyes and a young mind, may discover anew a world to whose future I have added, with love and to the extent of my ability, my own experience of the possibility of being.

Death is everywhere. Look around you: an insect dead in a corner of the house, a flower withered on the windowsill, a dead bird in a corner of the garden, a neighbour who has just died.

Death surrounds us just as birth does, and if birth is beautiful, then a phenomenon as universal and pervasive as death cannot be ugly.

Of every child who is born, perhaps nothing can be said with certainty about the life ahead; yet one prediction can be made with absolute certainty: one day that child will die. For this reason, I do not believe death is the opposite of life. Death, like birth, must be understood in relation to life itself, and thinking about death is therefore not separate from thinking about the nature of life and living.

Death is truly a final ornament upon the tree of life, making it possible to celebrate the completion of a cycle of living on this planet. To “live with death” means remembering a certain possibility after which no possibility will remain for the one we call “I”.

Aydin Areta
June 2019