To bear witness to death, in all its brutality, shakes your vision of the world

To see the ultimate suffering and harsh reality destined to become us all, will change you

Until you have viewed death and it’s indifference to human life

You will not be fully realized

Trauma and tragedy can bring new life, new perspective

But you must seek confrontation with the darkness that exists in the universe

This confrontation may bring destruction of the soul, inescapable nihilism and paralysis by fear

Or it can bring flourishing new growth, rebirth of mind, body and soul

This is your ultimate decision in the face of tragedy and despair

Meditate on this concept, your own mortality and the mortality of others

How you and those you love will fade to black, existing no more

Consumed by a force you can never control

Weep for those who lived with unrealized potential never manifested

Deep meaning never sought

A life lived in passivity

Until you have seen death, you will never know life

Until you have been in darkness, you will not truly know light

Until you have witnessed the end of a life’s story

The light of the soul extinnguished

Taken into the veil of the unknown, by the pale grip of the angel of death

Never to return again,

You will not fully comprehend the magic of reality

And the preciousness of life

If you never confront this darkness and stride into the vast possibilities with which life brings

You will never see realized, a life lived in bravery not fear

Until you know death, you will never know life