Life and death

These days of Holy Week, whether you're a believer or not, inevitably connect with death. These are days when Requiem Masses (Mozart, Verdi, and so on) are performed in churches and concert halls; where we see processions through the streets or reported on by the media; where the calendar's own holidays indicate "Good Friday" or "Easter Sunday."

Death is the focus of these days. The death of Jesus, but also what it means to suffer, to die, and to hope for another life. The human desire to transcend and not disappear completely, when dust returns to dust.

Death is a difficult thing to accept. We are life. We have consciousness because we enjoy life. Will we have consciousness when we die? Will anything remain of us? A generation will remember us. Two, at most. But, in the years to come, we will all be forgotten. Will nothing remain of us?

It feels like death is the end. We don't want to die because humans—and, in fact, animals too—tend toward life. However, can you imagine a life without death? In his brilliant novel The intermittencies of death, Portuguese Nobel Prize winner José Saramago describes the chaos of a country where, suddenly, people stop dying. From an economic standpoint, it would be unsustainable. The human species is socially organized according to death. The sustainability of the species requires an end for the beings that comprise it.

But what about on an individual level? I remember a conversation with a friend about it. We said: Would you like to never die? And my friend replied: "How horrible!" And he added: The responsibilities would never end; we would always have to be on the lookout for admission to live; it would be torture, a nightmare, a curse.

That is madness: we do not desire death, but it would be a condemnation to live forever.

Once, I was on my way to the airport and, in a taxi, on Barcelona's first ring road, a hearse overtook us. The taxi driver and I maintained a telling silence. We didn't say anything. Suddenly, the taxi driver said to me: "Look, this guy has run out of problems."

I hope you're having a happy Easter. Enjoy. Life's only two days. And you never know which one is the second.