Eestless and Undefeated Spirit

A financial counselor says: "When clients talk to me about their estates, they usually say, 'if I die,' not 'when I die.' Even 80-year olds use the conditional." I don't think this simply means that we deceive ourselves, consciously or unconsciously. Though, can we rule that out? Possibly it is testimony to the boundless will to live that animates most of us. You see it in the elderly who are limited by poor eyesight or shaky limbs but whose spirit would still like to make that trip or visit an old friend. In many cases the body wears out before the spirit and it's frustrating. The German writer Wolfgang Goethe said somewhere that the activity to which we're drawn, even if not involving the body, is for him an argument for another life after this one. Nature, he says, is obliged to provide an arena for this restless and undefeated spirit.