"I loathe the thought of annihilating myself quite as much now as I ever did. I think with sadness of all the books I've read all the places I've seen, all the knowledge I've amassed and that will be no more.  All the music, all the paintings, all the culture, so many places:  and suddenly nothing.  They made no honey, those things, they can provide no one with any nourishment.  At the most, if my books are still read, the reader will think:  There wasn't much she didn't see!  But that unique sum of things, the experience that I lived, with all its order and all its randomness--the Opera of Peking, the arena of Huelva, the candomble in Bahia, the dunes of El-Oued, Wabansia Avenue, the dawns in Profece, Tiryns, Castro talking to five thousand Cubans, a sulphur sky over a sea of clouds, the purpose holly, the white nights of Leningrad, the bells of the Liberation, an orange moon over Piraeus, a red sun rising over the desert, Torcello, Rome, all the things I've talked about, others I have left unspoken--there is no place where it will all live again."

Most of us might say that the person who voiced these words has led a very full and interesting life.  This person was Simone Beauvoir, author of the ground breaking Second Sex (these words are drawn from her Force of Circumstance), long time lover of Jean Paul Sartre, and widely respected French intellectual.  Beauvoir indeed had a rich life.  Yet she is acutely aware of the implications of her mortality.  As she says, all that she has experienced, all of this, well, it will never live again.  Quite true, quite true.  And, she adds, all this life, all this wonder, and suddenly nothing.  Quite true as well.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues its journey across the planet, all of us, I think, do well to consider, once again, God or not, this all encompassing question:  what is my life really about?