Death...The Mysterious Certainty

Michel de Montaigne's powerfully influential thoughts about the fear of death and dying.....

If you have lived a day, you have seen all:

one day is equal and like to all other days.

There is no other light, no other shade;

this very sun, this moon, these very stars,

this very order and disposition of things,

is the same your ancestors enjoyed,

and that shall also entertain future generations.

***

What a ridiculous thing it is 

to trouble ourselves about

taking the only step

 that is to deliver us from all trouble!

 As our birth brought us the birth of all things, 

so in our death is the death of all things included. 

 To mourn that we shall not be alive a hundred years from now,

 is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive 
a hundred years ago. 

 Death is the beginning of another life.

***

Wherever your life ends,
it is all there.
The utility of living consists not in the length of days,
but in the use of time.
A man may have lived long,
and yet lived but a little.
Make use of time while it is present with you.
It depends upon your will, 
and not upon the number of days,
to have a sufficient length of life.
Is it possible you can imagine never to arrive
at a place toward which you are continually going?
and yet, there is no journey that has no end.
And, if company will make it more pleasant or more easy to you,
does not all the world go the self-same way?
Does not all the world dance the same brawl that you do?
Is there anything that does not grow old,
as well as you?
A thousand men,
a thousand animals,
a thousand other creatures,
die at the same moment that you die.