On death: Thoughts on an unpopular topic

Dead Orange-crowned Warbler on a sidewalk - Photo: Still Gravity.
The deadly stiffness of an Orange-crowned Warbler - License our images here. 

Leo Tolstoy wrote in War and Peace:

Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible.

But is it that terrible? 

This is a topic that nobody likes to talk about, but death is part of the experience of life. It's a natural and expected thing. Everyone alive gets a free ticket for this trip. 

We all know that we will die, and everything we know in this world will end - at least for us. Thoughts, experiences, stuff, family, and friends will vanish in a moment. 

Does this horrible thing make death bad or good? 

Probably neither. All depends on how you see it. At the end, death is death. Things have an end. Even the stars! Let's call it recycling. 

Following with Tolstoy, he chose to die far from the mundane. He went away after privacy, looking for solitude and quietness for his death experience. 

He said in his prose: 

...to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

I like his idea of the "eternal source". Yes, because with death we return to a "place" where we were before. Or maybe not. Nobody knows for sure. But at the same time, the "eternal source" can be whatever each of us want it to be. 

So, at the end, death is... death. Don't you agree? 

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