Life is Fleeting and Death is Our Enemy

 By Sicebise Msengana 

This morning, I woke up thinking about the finitude of life—and how much I resent the fact that religion holds a monopoly on death. It promises us life after death, as if that softens the blow. But mourning the dead is natural; they deserve to be remembered. What isn’t right is letting grief consume us to the point that it halts our own lives.

If there is an afterlife, then we have nothing to fear. And if there isn’t, then death is a peaceful, dreamless sleep—free from suffering, free from worry, untouched by pain, poverty, corruption, hunger, war, disease, and evil. The Roman philosopher Lucretius compared death to the time before we were born, a state of non-existence that we do not lament. If we did not suffer before birth, why should we fear the oblivion that follows death? The only difference is that now, we have something to lose.

Life is fleeting. No human being has ever escaped death, and none ever will. Death doesn’t care for power, wealth, status, or accomplishment. It comes for all. And yet, we live as though we are immune to it, as if we have all the time in the world. We push our dreams to the future, telling ourselves we will pursue them when the time is right, forgetting that the future is never guaranteed. This self-deception is a defense mechanism, an unconscious refusal to face the reality of our mortality. The philosopher Martin Heidegger argued that authentic existence begins only when we confront the inevitability of death. When we stop pretending we have endless time, we start truly living.

But when you are surrounded by darkness, even the faintest glimmer of light seems brilliant by comparison. The secret to life is to take pleasure in the small things—to find beauty in the mundane. The warmth of the sun on your skin. The laughter of a loved one. The sound of rain against the window. A quiet moment of solitude. These are the things that make life worth living, yet we often overlook them in our constant pursuit of something greater. The ancient Stoics believed that true happiness comes not from external success, but from inner contentment and appreciation of the present moment.

Life is fragile. It is a constant struggle for survival, with predators above and parasites below, and every living thing is at the mercy of vast, indifferent natural forces that could erase it in an instant. The universe does not care for our existence, and yet we cling to life with everything we have. That is the paradox of being human: we are aware of our mortality, yet we fight against it every day, searching for meaning in a world that offers none.

But perhaps that is the answer—to create our own meaning, rather than searching for it in something external. Existentialist thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre argued that meaning is not inherent but must be constructed by each individual. Some find it in love, in family, in art, in knowledge, in creation. Others find it in simple existence, in the act of living itself. There is no right or wrong answer, only the one that makes life worth it for you.

We are like morning dew, evaporating with the rising sun. Every second slips away like sand through an hourglass. But that is not a reason for despair. It is a reason to celebrate. Life is precious precisely because it is fragile. It is valuable because it is brief.

If we lived forever, would we cherish life the same way? Would a sunset be as breathtaking if we knew we would see an infinite number of them? Would love be as deep if we did not know it could be lost? Would any moment hold meaning if there was no end to contrast it? Albert Camus argued that the absurdity of life—the tension between our desire for meaning and the universe’s indifference—should not lead to despair, but to rebellion. Instead of resigning ourselves to nihilism, we should embrace life, reveling in the experiences it offers, even in the face of its impermanence.

Perhaps death is not the enemy we make it out to be, but rather the force that gives life its urgency. The reminder that we must live fully, love fiercely, and embrace the present.

Because in the end, all we have is now.