From The Atlantic: The existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom, who has helped countless people grapple with their mortality and fear of death, is now coming to terms with his own aging process and mortality.
“For all the morbidity of existential psychotherapy, it is deeply life-affirming. Change is always possible. Intimacy can be freeing. Existence is precious. ‘I hate the idea of leaving this world, this wonderful life,’ Yalom said, praising a metaphor devised by the scientist Richard Dawkins to illustrate the fleeting nature of existence. Imagine that the present moment is a spotlight moving its way across a ruler that shows the billions of years the universe has been around. Everything to the left of the area lit by the spotlight is over; to the right is the uncertain future. The chances of us being in the spotlight at this particular moment—of being alive—are minuscule. And yet here we are.”
