Another Choice

A lesson, however, that each of us eventually learns, more or less gracefully, is that the more one gives and the more apt one is to receive.

The child who, playing, gives of itself to the game without counting, exuberant, receives more energy than if he had sat away merely watching.

The more we give ourselves and the more consequent is our opening.

Thus do we pass a first threshold, from mere dependency to participation.

This particular progress constitutes one of the civilizing factors of our common space.

***

But when death acts, there is cessation of energy.

How?

Where does the intervention occur?

Wherefrom does it operate?

And where does the process of defeat of the body begin – the gradual ageing process which, in its cellular activity, leads it inexorably to the betrayal of its organic integrity and makes death that much more necessary?

***

Our dependency remains entire, from the first to the last instant.

We remain separated from the energy which animates everything by a veil of ignorance, just as we are from the fact of death.

Of course it is possible to follow an individual discipline which may allow one, on the condition of developing a considerable force of will, to dissociate oneself progressively from desires and even from needs and, eventually, one can even bring one’s own physiological organism to its own failure.

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