The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

by Sheldon Solomon

Suddenly, you grasp the horrible truth: Death is not just an unfortunate accident that occasionally befalls the aged, the hapless, and the wicked. Sooner or later, you realize, death will happen to everyone, including you; the curtain will surely fall while you are strutting across the earthly stage, and your ultimate fate will be the same as that of the disemboweled squirrel splattered on a roadside, or that skeleton you so fear. This realization is momentous. “Nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable to my own being,” wrote the poet William Wordsworth. Such thoughts “often lie too deep for tears.” In this instant, you became fully human. Once children understand that they, as well as their mothers and fathers, are perpetually vulnerable and ultimately finite, they shift from their parents to their culture as their primary source of psychological equanimity. Deities and social authorities and institutions now appear to be more stable and enduring than our all-too-mortal and therefore all-too-vulnerable parents, grandparents, and pets.