Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have....It seems to me that we ought to rejoice in the fact of death – ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death, by confronting with passion the conundrum of life (James Baldwin)