staring-at-the-sun-yalom

32 staring at the sun
strangers pawning his belongings (even his bed sheets
and nightdress), and overhears members of his community
discuss his death and dismiss it lightly. Next, the
Ghost of the Future escorts Scrooge to the churchyard
to view his grave. Scrooge gazes at his tombstone, fingers
the letters of his name, and at that moment he
undergoes a transformation. In the next scene Scrooge is a
new and compassionate person.
Other examples of awakening experiences—a
confrontation with death that enriches life—abound in
great literature and film. Pierre, the protagonist of
Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Peace, faces death by firing
squad, only to be reprieved after several men in line
ahead of him have been shot. A lost soul before this
event, Pierre is transformed and lives with zest and purpose
in the remainder of the novel. (In real life, twentyone-year-old
Dostoevsky was similarly reprieved at the
last moment, and his life similarly transformed.)
Earlier thinkers, long before Tolstoy—since the
beginning of the written word—have reminded us
of the interdependence of life and death. The Stoics
(for example, Chrysippus, Zeno, Cicero, and Marcus
Aurelius) taught us that learning to live well is learning
to die well and that, conversely, learning to die well is
learning to live well. Cicero said that “to philosophize
is to prepare for death.” St. Augustine wrote, “it is only
in the face of death that a man’s self is born.” Many
medieval monks kept a human skull in their cell to