The death of death. - by Olaitan Sanni

Death begins its silent journey towards us from the moment we begin to live. It has never been late. It has never forgotten a single name. It does not discriminate between kings and beggars, the brilliant and the foolish, the loved and the lonely. Empires have risen believing themselves eternal, only to become ruins beneath the feet of people who no longer remember their names. Great thinkers have tried to understand death, poets have tried to romanticize it while religions have promised that it is either a doorway, a judgment, a transformation, or the beginning of something greater. Yet despite everything we have said about it, death remains one of existence’s most profound mysteries. What frightens us most is not death itself, but the certainty that it will one day come. We can postpone almost everything. A journey can be delayed. A dream can be abandoned and pursued again. A mistake can sometimes be corrected. But death appears to be the one appointment from which no living thing has ever permanently escaped. Each breath carries us farther from where our lives began and nearer to where they will end. And so we speak of the end. We imagine that final day, the end of humanity, the end of life, perhaps even the end of the world itself. We imagine a moment when the final heart beats, the final pair of eyes closes, and the last breath disappears into silence. But then I find myself asking: If the last living thing dies, what becomes of death? For death, as we understand it, seems to require life. It is not a thing we can touch. It has no visible body. We know it only through its relationship with the living. Death is the absence that follows presence. It is the end of movement, consciousness, breath, and becoming. Without something alive to cease living, can death still exist? Imagine the universe after the final death. No birds crossing the sky. No insects beneath the soil. No human voices asking questions. No animals running from danger. No trees reaching slowly toward the sun. No heartbeats. No dreams. No fear. Only silence. Would death still stand there, victorious? Or would it suddenly become meaningless? There is something deeply ironic about the possibility that death, after taking everything, may be left with nothing. It spends all of existence, at least in our imagination, following life. Waiting patiently at the edge of every beginning. Yet if it finally succeeds in claiming every living thing, it may also destroy the very thing that gave it a purpose. Can there be death where there is no life? A shadow cannot exist without something to cast it. A door has no meaning without the possibility of entering or leaving. Silence becomes meaningful because we have known sound. Perhaps death, too, exists only because life exists. And if that is true, then the end of all life would mark the end of death itself. Maybe death is not eternal after all. Maybe it survives only as long as something lives. We speak of death as though it is immortal. We say that death comes for everyone, as though it stands outside the laws that govern everything else. Yet even death may be incapable of immortality. It may not be a being that survives independently, but an event, a condition, a consequence, a name we give to the moment life is no longer there. And so, after claiming everything, death might face the same fate it gave to all others: the loss of purpose. What is a hunter without prey? What is darkness in a universe without eyes to perceive it? The universe’s greatest paradox may be that death can never truly defeat life while life endures, because every new birth is, in its own way, a rebellion against death. What if death eventually wins completely, its victory may become the cause of its own destruction. The moment it extinguishes the last possibility of life, it may extinguish the possibility of death itself. We have always imagined ourselves as the final victims of death. We fear being the ones left behind, the ones taken, the ones who disappear. But maybe, in the unimaginable end, death itself is the final thing left to face extinction. Maybe the last death isn’t ours. Maybe it is death’s.

Other insights from Olaitan Sanni

Referral Earning

Points-to-Coupons