Quote

Loss doesn't feel redeemable. But for me one consoling aspect is the recognition that, in this at least, none of us is different from anyone else: We all lose loved ones; we all face our own death.

I nearly died three times in 2008, and when you go through those experiences, you realize that you're blessed every day that you wake up. My world changed, my life changed, and with the help of my wife Jane, I was able to survive.

The thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear... What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away... We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities.

I've inherited a sense of that loss from my parents because it was so palpable all the time while I was growing up, the sense of what my parents had sacrificed in moving to the United States, and yet at the same time, building a life here and all that that entailed.

My father died when I was still in college, and it was sudden, and he was my beloved parent, and you just can't imagine what you life is going to be like.

In life, loss is inevitable. Everyone knows this, yet in the core of most people it remains deeply denied - 'This should not happen to me.' It is for this reason that loss is the most difficult challenge one has to face as a human being.

Certainly, we all wonder what is beyond, and when you lose a loved one, I think part of the grieving process includes where that person might have gone or if you'll ever see them again. I think it forces you to look up to the sky, to the cosmos.

And I thought my loss my loss was not, certainly, the end of the world, but to lessen the enthusiasm of those young people who were signed up, I thought that was tragic.

It's not lost on me that everyone dies, but some people have a kind of immortality about them, and you can't imagine that they will ever be gone.