Since time immemorial, mortals have bewailed their mortality.
They have longed to escape it. They have groped, mostly in vain, for some hope of eternal life.
I speak, of course, of human mortals.
Men alone of all creatures know that they must die; men alone morn their dead and remember their dead.
Mortality, in a manner of speaking, has come to mark the human condition.
And the word “mortal” has tended to be almost a synonym for men, such as in Homeric and later Greek usage, contrasting them to the envied, ageless immorality of the gods.
Through the ages, the term has become a persistent philosophical and religious admonition in aid of a truly human life. As Psalm 90 puts it, “Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.”
But if life is strange, death, perhaps, is stranger.
We are all programmed to die, just as if some cosmic computer had determined our limits and our possibilities.
One scientific definition I remember from high school science class is this: death is a cessation of all life processes.
More, more to come…