It is as if I can perceive mortality itself —

Death itself. Omnipresent. The question — why do things die? Why do things live?

It is as if there is a heaviness that follows us everywhere.

It is time, but as a secondary effect. Its primary identity, I think, is not time — but, rather, because death demands an expiration, and every expiration necessarily has a date, it becomes time.

It is the essence of finality. It is the essence of surrender. It is the essence of our essential weakness. We all are in possession of an Achilles heel — our mortality.

Wisdom is about not blinding ourselves to the fact of our eventual demise. Wisdom surrenders before the sword is at our necks.

Mortality is… a funny thing. In contemplating the question — why? why anything at all? why live if we are only to die? — I am reminded of my own immaturity.

I’d think I’d have accepted it by now, that I’d have stopped struggling, that I’d no longer have such an emotional resistance to that guaranteed end.

But I do not. A sadness fills me. A struggle. I kick. I am strapped to a bed, locked down by steel, human flesh against invulnerable metal. And yet, I struggle regardless. Such is the foolishness of mortals. And I am aware of this, and yet, I feel bound by it regardless.

I feel like I must allow myself to die in this way. I must allow myself to give up. And, in doing so, I might discover truth. Real truth.

I wish to stop resisting my mortal chains, and instead embrace them. I wish to embrace my essential helplessness. I wish to embrace the fact that I am trapped, stranded, utterly vulnerable, and at the mercy of the elements.

Yea, I fear. How deeply I fear. Why shouldn’t I?