Numerous empirical observations have shown that a human being is not merely mortal, but “suddenly mortal.” Yet, as if enacting the Cartesian split between the cognitive and the extended, the quite concrete empirical human being refuses to believe in this wisdom accumulated over millennia. More precisely, he does everything possible to expel both this thought and the experiences associated with it from his mind.

At the same time, it seems that a person’s maturation, their vertical becoming—from a reactive puddle, as it were—is largely connected with the internalization of this idea. And indeed—what if a human being (as a becoming being) is only as human as they become toward death? This is not about “jumping out the window” (which, intuitively, seems to me more like an escape from death—though it requires separate reflection), but about honestly living one’s life as limited, one that will inevitably, at some point, break off into unknowable darkness.

But after all—the finitude of life. For the concrete empirical subject (I have one such friend), it is often quite difficult to accept and come to terms with any experience of finitude, any little death: a completed (seemingly) project, exhausted (seemingly) relationships, a childhood dream that has outlived itself (seemingly), and so on. And only the harsh existential given—in the form, as a rule, of death or the physical inaccessibility of this or that little life—sometimes plunges the subject into such experiences.

Yet for the most part, one manages to avoid these uncomfortable experiences, doesn’t one? I seem to make choices, but deep down I often unconsciously cling to the discarded alternatives. Sometimes they fall away on their own, and then it seems to me that I, too, have made a choice here. But aren’t such choices a kind of flirting with the experience of “Never again”? It is flirting because it seems like “never again,” yet a card is cunningly hidden up the sleeve: “Well, if I really want to, it’s always possible.” “In reality,” all options are always available, I am omnipotent, I will live forever and can always return to this or that “project.” Yet another game, yet another form of childishness.

And this game—how best to hide from death—does not allow one to live fully and ontologically vertically. The accumulated “choices” overload the “Cartesian thinker,” fill him with errors and collisions, and ultimately lead to an earlier death of the thinking part than of the extended one (the physical body).

It seems that a healing, vitalizing choice is always a choice made under the watchful gaze of Death. It is not the choice of an eternal being, but a choice against the backdrop of eternity. The choice to die—that is, the recognition of oneself as a finite being—apparently reanimates what is alive in a person. But this is not certain…