Death defines man’s precariousness, marks the time of his earthly life. Recognizing this natural limit is therefore also a narcissistic question, since it resizes the omnipotence of the human being, forcing him to face his own death.
If we stopped to consider death as the limit to life, everything would appear quite clear, but the questions follow spontaneously.
Are we sure that death is the limit to life?
Or maybe death is the limit to earthly life?
What is after death?
Human has tried to answer these questions through religion. The Christian faith makes the limit coincide with the doctrine of dogma, the limit imposed by God. In this regard, poetry comes to my mind (Morning) I illuminate (myself) with immensity.
In this poetic composition, Giuseppe Ungaretti expresses the illumination of the sudden awareness of the sense of the vastness of the cosmos. The message he intends to communicate is the fusion of these two opposing elements – the single, the finite, is reconciled with the immense, finding in the light the principle and the possibility of this fusion.
It is a moment in which the finite and the infinite come together almost in a single element – there is no longer anything around, only a great light that originates a moment of intuition in which he gets in touch with the absolute.
Death – who is willing to deal with their limitations?
In the first place, recognizing one’s limitations is not the same as accepting them. Recognizing indicates the focus of a certain characteristic in relation to something else. It leads man to look at himself, this to put himself in front of himself, in an attempt to be able to recognize himself.
It means dealing with the finitude of man, or the condition of being finite, limited, and imperfect. Understanding the finitude of man means being willing to deal with death.