Love and Death

Love and Death

Only those who have really

lived are ready for death.

They do not meet it as an

enemy.

They receive it

as the final gift.

If life has been known,

death is not its end.

It is the peak,

the last thing life can offer,

and the best.

Life gives two great things:

love and death.

Both are dangerous

because both ask you to

dissolve.

In love you lose yourself into

another.

In death you lose yourself into

the whole.

That is why so many fear love.

They speak of it constantly

yet remain careful, guarded,

half-present.

Because love is already

a kind of dying.

Those who have loved deeply

do not fear death the same way.

They have already practised the

letting-go.

They have already tasted

what it means to disappear

into something larger

Lovers can die for each other

without much calculation.

They have touched a higher

quality of life,

so ordinary clinging

loses its hold.

Look at those who have never

loved.

They fear death more.

Look at the misers-

those who turned to money

because they could not turn

to a living person.

When a human being

cannot be loved,

the dead substitute is chosen.

But the fear remains.

The one who has never risked

love

has never learned how to die

while still alive.

And so the final death

arrives as a stranger

instead of a fulfillment.

Those who have lived

and loved

meet it differently.

They have already practised

the art of letting go.

What remains

is only the last, largest

version

of the same movement.