Life comes into being without any invitation of our own: we suddenly finds ourselves in it. And as soon as we recognize ourselves as alive we become aware that we tend toward inevitable death. If we do not gain some adequate understanding of our life and our death, during the life-span that is ours, our life will become nothing but a querulous refusal, a series of complaints that it must end in death. Then the fear of death becomes so powerful that it results in the flat refusal of life….. Death brings life to its goal. But the goal is not death—the goal is pefect life”
Thomas Merton