Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)

Where across the course of your day today, could you consider where it might be that you stop fearing the psychopomps, such as the Grim Reaper, and place your trust in yourself, the telospomp as the Gatekeeper?

Traditionally, a psychopomp guides souls from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead: Hermes, Anubis, Charon, Hades, and Hell.

Etymology: psyche (soul) + pompos (guide or conductor): literally “soul guide.”

The modern image of the Grim Reaper, a hooded skeletal figure carrying a scythe, originated during one of the darkest chapters in human history: the Black Death (1347–1351).

The plague wiped out an estimated one-third of Europe’s population.
Death was omnipresent, indiscriminate, and terrifying.

Artists, writers, and priests began personifying Death as a figure who “reaped” lives, much like one might harvest crops.

The scythe symbolised that harvest: a tool used to cut down grain at the moment it ripens, just as Death cuts lives when their time has come.

The black robe an…