Humans, by nature, fear the things we can't understand. We fear the dark, not because it is dark, but because of what may lurk within those swirls and folds of shadow. And, in the same way that we tremble at the darkness, we are petrified of Death. Not because of what it is, rather, because of what may lie hidden behind the idea of the thing. Some of us, we believe in a heaven or hell; we think that life will not cease, that it cannot cease. To ease the fear that aches in our throats, we tell ourselves that our lives are just a journey to Heaven. But to those who believe, I say this: isn't eternity the same as nothingness? We who fear nothingness above all else, we who fear a punctuation on our lives, we who fear an 'end', a finale, a sudden lifting of both pain and joy, a forever unconsciousness. To live forever amounts to the same thing as to never exist at all. Words that bring a cold pain to my chest. Because it reveals the trappings of life. No one wants to stop being. Yet we will. And therein lies the horrific beauty that is life. Life is beautiful, life is precious, only because it is finite. Things with constancy lack meaning. It is the moments in our lives that shape us; they stick with us, yet they are just moments. And while we often wish that a single night will drag on forever, we know that it cannot. While we know, in our hearts, that the most valuable currency in our doomed existence is time, we often squander it. This concept presents the beginnings of a dark spiral. What is life? Why was it granted to me? What does any of this mean? And to that, I say this: to accept our own mortality is to conquer fear, and, in a sense, conquer Death itself. Once we accept that life is fragile beyond measure, and that fragility is what makes it so breathtakingly amazing, we can understand that we exist for a simple, seemingly insignificant purpose. To live among other people, to create smiles and joy, to learn, to love, to overcome. It is the little things that matter, and life is a simple collection of little things accomplished by little people in a world that stretches the fabric of our imagination. Don't try to ignore the fear. Face it. Accept a dark truth, and live freely.