Mini-story: The True Death

In our society, there are two deaths. In the past, in less enlightened times, we considered only the physical process of dying. The end of a life, where we ritually gathered — as we still do — to take stock of someone’s existence. But those ceremonies lack their central participant, who is already gone. Like a eulogy, which is always delivered too late to be of meaning to the person it’s for, we were too limited and too literal in our thinking. As we move through life, our path touches upon many others. Intertwined destinies, as ripples spread out through our entire world. Few ripples at first, and then more, and more still, and then finally — in the long extremes of age, as we quieten and turn inward — fewer and fewer. And like ripples, spreading out over water and interacting in complex and beautiful ways, our influence on the world finally stills. But there are other nodes in our network of impact, and they tend not to disappear when we do. Our children, our friends, and those…

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