Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash
Halloween is almost here. To celebrate the season, let’s talk about something scary: dying. Death has always been a two-sided debate. On one side: the Stoics, the ancient thinkers who believed that death is nothing to us, that the candle must gutter, and that we shouldn’t mourn the wind. They offered calmness as a form of salvation. To die, they said, is to stop being bothered by trivial things, a solution disguised as a problem.
Opposite them are the tragic poets. Achilles, furious against fate. Dylan Thomas, who urged his father (and us) not to go gentle. For them, calm was cowardice. Death was the final injustice, and it was met with fire. To surrender was to participate in the insult.
Both camps, to their credit, wanted dignity. The Stoic sought it through serenity; the Romantic, through refusal. Both miscalculated something essential: that death is neither enemy nor friend. It does not bargain. It does not notice your poise or your tantrum.
Maybe there’s a third option. Picture confronting death as if looking into a mirror, without flattery or self-deception. It’s about recognizing what lies ahead, seeing it honestly, and meeting it with moral clarity. Not quite serenity, nor rebellion. Let’s call it lucidity.
Lucidity requires courage because it exposes every myth we create to get through the day. It asks us to recognize fear without becoming it. It demands care for ourselves, for those we will leave behind, and for the ones who will have to pick up after us. Clarity, courage, care: the three notes of a final chord that can still sound human.
We might think of this not as acceptance or resistance, but as attention. To pay attention, even as the curtain falls, is to stay alive in the only way that still matters. Death will take the body. It always does. But if you can meet it with eyes open, if you can witness it, name it, think it through, then for a moment, you have won something like understanding.
And when it comes right down to it, understanding may be the nearest thing we have to grace.
Richard Bryant
The Rev. Richard Bryant writes about language, meaning, and the ways we stay human.