Without forgiveness, we might as well be wholly embalmed in our past understanding and ways of life, locked in a karmic coffin of “it’s always been this way.” But stepping up to the challenges of our day to accept the truth and the divinity of our own mortality is to live and die sustainably, for the greater good.

We are nothing without death. We must learn to coexist with its beautifully chaotic nature or we will continue to lose sight of purpose and hope. Get comfortable in your own skin to the point of no longer needing it.

Death cannot have just one definition because the meaning of our existence can be defined in as many ways as it can be experienced; so is true of death. And other people’s lives can (and should) impact us and affect our view of life just as their passing has the potential to do so, as long as we open ourselves up to the grief they inspire.

But the ultimate truth is that my relationship with death, like most any relationship, is rather complicated. It ebbs and flows the more I see of it and the greater contexts in which I can relate to it. Finding it in the snack aisle at the grocery store or feeling death as a kiss by a gust of wind. Sometimes it is sweet and other times haunting.

We’ve been counting deaths for a year and a half. Everyday we have new and rising death-toll numbers. And we often see them as abstract, forgetting they are neighbors and family members. Real flesh and blood. It’s easy to outsource death as a statistic and keep it safely as such, rather than accepting that we are part of the sum. Our lives have been on the line for 18 months and having to navigate that reality can simply become too much.