Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer

by Barbara Ehrenreich

So of course we die, even without help from natural disasters or plagues: We are gnawing away at ourselves all the time, whether with our overactive immune cells or suicidal patterns of thought.

Life is too short to forgo these pleasures, and would be far too long without them.

It is one thing to die into a dead world and, metaphorically speaking, leave one’s bones to bleach on a desert lit only by a dying star. It is another thing to die into the actual world, which seethes with life, with agency other than our own, and, at the very least, with endless possibility.