“Who are you when you do not exist?
“… When the question presents itself as an alien chill, it is saying something important: it is an accusation. It is telling me I am too concerned with trivialities. That life is losing itself in trifles which cannot bear inspection in the face of death. That I am evading my chief responsibility. That I must begin to face the deepest of all decisions — the “answer of death” — the acceptance of the death sentence – and with joy, because of the victory of Christ.
—Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander