What we’re really running away from is a confrontation with – and even non-German speakers might respond to the sonorous depth of this key Heideggerian term – das Nichts (The Nothing), which lies on the other side of Being. The Nothing is everywhere; it stalks us, it will swallow us up eventually, but – Heidegger insists – a life is only well lived when one has taken Nothingness and the brief nature of Being on board – as we might do when, for example, a gentle evening light gives way to darkness at the end of a warm summer’s day in the foothills of the Bavarian alps.
