There is a profound lesson in the reality of death and our accursed capacity to forget. Leaving the past behind isn't simply a strategy for coping with life. It is the inevitable course of nature. Save for the great library in the heart of every cell and the words of bards and poets mingled and confused in the glare of history, very little remains to testify of all that was. This forgetting is a kind of forgiveness, perhaps the most perfect of all. Matter lives and dies countless times but restlessly reincarnates through the food chain without complaint, a picture of unconditional love.

We are taught to make as much of ourselves as we can. In truth, we find joy in gradually, painfully, getting over ourselves. Our greatest joys are not in a frozen moment but in transformation. We are all in the process of escaping ourselves, bargaining with ourselves, looking outside ourselves, growing despite ourselves, dying to others, dying to ourselves, and dying.