“This is the kernel of wisdom in the cliché of the celebrity who claims that a brush with cancer was “the best thing that ever happened” to them: **it pitches them into a more authentic mode of being**, in which everything suddenly feels more vividly meaningful. Such accounts sometimes give the impression that people reliably become happier as a result of facing the truth about death, which isn’t the case; “happier” is clearly the wrong word for the new depth that is added to life when you grasp, deep in your bones, the fact that you’re going to die and that your time is therefore severely limited. But things certainly do get realer. As she recalls in her memoir The Iceberg, the British sculptor [[Marion Coutts]] was taking her two-year-old son to his first day with a new caregiver when her husband, the art critic [[Tom Lubbock]], came to find her to tell her about the malignant brain tumor from which he was to die within three years: “Something has happened. A piece of news. We have had a diagnosis that has the status of an event. The news makes a rupture with what went before: clean, complete and total, save in one respect. It seems that after the event, the decision we make is to remain. Our [family] unit stands … “We learn something. We are mortal. **You might say you know this but you don’t**. The news falls neatly between one moment and another. You would not think there was a gap for such a thing … **It is as if a new physical law has been described for us bespoke: absolute as all the others are, yet terrifyingly casual. It is a law of perception. It says, You will lose everything that catches your eye**.” --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[momento-mori]], [[attention]] , [[personal-values]] **Source** -- [[202410130434 - B - Four Thousand Weeks]]