Truth comes in various languages, and when important voices leave us, we mourn.

“I tell students when they come to my class, they come to learn how to die.” – Cornel West

In January 2016, the deaths of some prominent musicians and celebrities overlaid on my reading of Daniel Klein and Thomas Cathcart’s fantastic book Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates: Using Philosophy (and Jokes!) to Explore Life, Death, the Afterlife, and Everything in Between. Of course, that was the beginning of what has seemed like an endless string of losses in the worlds of music and celebrity. Here, I will not recount 2016’s string of celebrity losses that have garnered so much attention from those of us who loved their art, nor will I rail about why celebrity death somehow elicits more grief from many of us than our fellow humans who die on a daily basis from war or from lack of clean water or basic needs. The focus here will be on death as our destination. Continue reading Thanks for the Reminder, 2016