> It's similar to your instinct of self-preservation, only on a longer timescale. I haven't thought of it like that. But it would seem one is an unconscious re

> It's similar to your instinct of self-preservation, only on a longer timescale. I haven't thought of it like that. But it would seem one is an unconscious reaction, spurred on by the autonomous nervous system, while the other is a (seemingly) conscious choice (if we don't get into determinism). Then we get back to the beginning. You can influence the outcome of a sudden event, but not your own destined death down the line. Taking your "natural to want good experiences to last for as long as possible and to be at least a little 'pissed'," into account, doesn't that align with my parent comment? By consciously obsessing about how your days are numbered and that you have relatively little time alive, are you not contributing to your own state of being "pissed?" Are you not being self-sabotaging? > I guess you describe a kind of stoic philosophy where one shouldn't be concerned by things one cannot change at all, but that requires a lot of conscious effort, at least that's my personal experience, and the untrained human reaction to the fact that the good days are numbered is to be "pissed". My response to this will sound aggressive, but once we identify a lapse in our untrained thinking, the practical thing to do would be to fix this. In other words, as you mentioned, we can override such thoughts with sustained conscious effort. It may be difficult, but it would be a better use of time to make ours as good as it can be.