life and death

This came from Wayne Burns today, who has been emailing daily morning Merton quotes to me for quite awhile. It seems especially poignant these days.

"When life and death lose their proper meaning, that it to say, when they are no longer experienced as what they really are, then the awful and empty power creeps into everything and sickens everything. So when death becomes most trivial, it also becomes most pervasive. It is only 'the end of life.' So all life ends. All is death. Why live?" (LOVE AND LIVING, page 87)

Why live?