/lit/ - Literature

>In one sense, then, to refuse to seek compensations or balance— whether this is through the act of forgiveness, through accepting a lack of recognition or reward, or through honestly attending to the reality of some present suffering—is also to accept death, as she notes memorably on one occasion: “To forgive debts. To accept the past without asking for future compensation. To stop time at the present instant. This is also the acceptance of death.”

>Conversely, the dynamic that she describes as “the search for equilibrium” is itself the manifestation of the denial of death. There is a sense in which death is the ultimate sign of imbalance, for it marks the point beyond which no counterbalance, repayment, or compensation is possible, and marks out our lives as essentially unbalanced and unfinished. To accept death is to accept that one’s vital energy is essentially limited, and that one is destined to lose all of it.