The only real question about all this finitude is whether we're willing to confront it or not. - Oliver Burkeman

...no matter how much success you may experience in life, your eventual story - no offence intended - will be one of failure. Your bodily organs will fail, and you'll die.

All these counterproductive ways of thinking about failure manifest themselves most acutely in the phenomenon of perfectionism. This is one of those traits that many people seem secretly, or not so secretly, proud to possess, since it hardly seems like a character flaw – yet perfectionism, at bottom, is a fear-driven striving to avoid the experience of failure at all costs. At its extremes, it is an exhausting and permanently stressful way to live. (There is a greater correlation between perfectionism and suicide, research suggests, than between feelings of hopelessness and suicide.)

it's 'like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.')