"The bad moments I've had in my life have only been cosmological in nature. Once during the night I got up, came into this room and looked my fear in the face, carefully, and the crisis was resolved. It's not easy, because at that moment you feel like a being thrown into nothingness, you have no ties to anything. It is the dark night of St. John of the Cross, suffering that seems insurmountable, unbearable, and yet you can overcome it in the blink of an eye. Just remember that we are impermanent. We think we are eternal, and that is our misfortune. They don't teach us how to die in school; the ancient Egyptians, on the other hand, built a civilization around death."
January 1, 1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Franco_Battiato