About Death

Detail of "The Creation of Adam" — Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel

"Procreation and death are consubstantial correlates, correlates that neutralize and suppress each other mutually."
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation

The ancient Greeks had a tradition of placing a coin —an obol— beneath the tongue of their dead. It was payment for Charon, the ferryman of Hades, the guardian of the threshold between the world of the living and the realm of the dead. This image, laden with symbolism, reveals something that modernity has tried to hide with stubborn clumsiness: death is not the enemy of life, but its most intimate condition.

In this essay from the book "Resisting the Sisyphus Average", Miguel Troncoso Castro explores with philosophical and literary sharpness the nature of human mortality. Drawing on Schopenhauer, Greek mythology, and evolutionary biology, the author invites us to rethink our relationship with finitude — not as tragedy, but as the secret engine that gives meaning to everything we do, love, and build.

Why do we work, raise children, breathe? What is the point of love and art in a fragile and changing world? Troncoso journeys through these questions with the courage of a traveler who does not fear looking into the abyss, discovering that in the acceptance of death lies a paradoxical celebration of life.

This essay is part of a collection of 25 reflections written between 2011 and 2014, "mere pretexts to start a conversation", that together form a positive and constructive vision of loss, illness, and death as necessary forces for individual and social growth.

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From the book: Resisting the Sisyphus Average | Miguel Troncoso Castro | First English Edition, March 2022.

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