A human being lives his ordinary life with the illumination of a light of which he is not aware until it is extinguished. Once it is extinguished, life is suddenly deprived of all value, meaning, or whatever one wants to say. One suddenly becomes aware that mere existence—as one would like to say—is in itself still completely empty, bleak. It is as if the sheen was wiped away from all things, everything is dead. This sometimes happens after a sickness, for example but of course it is not therefore less real or important, that is, not taken care of by a shrug. One has then died alive. Or rather: this is the real death full that one can fear, for the mere “end of life” one does not experience (as I have written quite correctly). But what I have written here isn’t the full truth either.[1]
[1]Klagge, J. C., & Nordmann, A. (Eds.). (1997). Movements of Thought: Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Diary, 1930–1932 and 1936–1937. Rowman & Littlefield.
