I have lots of thoughts but dwindling time for tonight's Nostr-ations so instead have a poem and a placeholder for me to insert my own thoughts on the topics and questions you've raised in the future:

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,

And I had put away

My labor, and my leisure too,

For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,

Their lessons scarcely done;

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed

A swelling of the ground;

The roof was scarcely visible,

The cornice but a mound.

Since then 't is centuries; but each

Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses' heads

Were toward eternity.

by Emily Dickinson