Two speakers discuss what humans actually care about when facing mortality. They cite economic research and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, where a grandmother says the only thing that matters is knowing you were loved. Love, they suggest, spreads outward and becomes the thing that counts.
Stuff that I've written looking at, like, economic research and neuroscience research, so much of it comes back to the fact that we are mortal creatures looking for a sense of meaning and a sense of love.
That's why we're here. And in the end, what really matters— and I've heard this over and over and read it, and I remember a wonderful Toni Morrison novel, Song of Solomon, where in that book, one of the characters' granddaughter dies, and the proclamation that the grandmother makes at her funeral is, and she I remember the first time I read that, I thought, that's really all that matters. All the awards, all the attention, all the things that people are striving to get and have, do and be. In the end, what you want is to know that you were loved.
I think also that you loved other people because it's like a cascade out there.
It boils down to who did you love and who loved you? Absolutely.
