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I'm 29 and comfortable with the thought of dying. Not looking forward to it, but not frightened either. The "how" is just like anything else, practice. Since yo
by MrLeap 9y ago
I'm 29 and comfortable with the thought of dying. Not looking forward to it, but not frightened either. The "how" is just like anything else, practice. Since you can only die once, you have to rely on the deaths of others you care about to help you over your fear.
When I was in third grade, one of my brothers was murdered. I felt all the panic of mortality, and intense, visceral grief -- etc that you might imagine. A few years after that, a cousin was stabbed to death. I didn't know him much, and I figured that was the reason why his funeral felt much easier.
My grandmother died in 2007, she was the sweetest lady you'd ever meet. It was even "easier" than the cousin's funeral.
In 2009, an uncle died. In 2010, an aunt. Another aunt died in 2013.
Another one of my brothers always used to say that he never wanted a funeral. When he died October 2016, some family threw him a funeral anyways. I felt like I was doing his memory a solid by not going. At an earlier stage in my life, when I was more self important -- I would have been livid at the family who threw a funeral for someone who didn't want one in life. Now I know stuff like that just doesn't matter.
The pain of losing a loved one has changed from an acute stabbing sensation in my kidneys to somber waves that roll over me, then recede. Getting better at coping with the deaths of those you love helps you come to terms with your own mortality.
Basically, don't worry about it.
- Clubber 9y agoYou might once it starts becoming more statistically probable.
- maxxxxx 9y agoFrom my own experience and what I have observed in others people start worrying less about death once they know it's getting closer.
- state_less 9y agoUNDER the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me lie: Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. - Robert Louis Stevenson. 1850–1894
- MrLeap 9y agoProbably not. I rolled my truck a few years ago, and my numbness persisted even while windshields were shattering and up became down, then up and then down over and over again. I wondered if I was going to die, and just surrendered myself to physics. If I ever fall feet first into a wood-chipper, I'll probably panic and try to find a way out. The instinct to survive is still there. The existential dread is just gone.
- Clubber 9y agoYes, well those are statistical anomalies. Once you get to a point where in a perfect scenario, you may only have 40 years at best, or 25 years normally, that weighs on your mind and actions. Not to mention, those last 20 years aren't nearly as good from a health/pains perspective as the first or middle 20. "Probable" that I used isn't a good word, more like "inevitable." When you get a certain age, you know you will be dead in the time it took you to be born and graduate from college. Your window is rapidly closing. What are you going to do with the last 20-40 years? You might not be able to do much because you are stuck working, making someone else rich. You may very well be bound to that job because of health care costs. When you are young, you may realize this will eventually happen, but you won't really understand it until you are in that situation. It's some heavy shit. People thinking about this sort of thing is probably why humans invented religion and spirituality.
- racer-v 9y agoYeah, experiencing a lot of "little deaths" makes it easier. These can be the death of a relative, a near-death experience, or a serious trauma that means you will never realize your previous dreams (e.g. a football player losing his legs). Your ego starts to dissolve, and you become less caught up in your ambitions. You accept that what feels like unending potential does in fact end.
- lsaferite 9y agoTo add a little levity to a serious discussion, "little deaths" in French are quite a different subject. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_petite_mort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_petite_mort
- Aloha 9y ago> Now I know stuff like that just doesn't matter. When we're young, we're preoccupied with if something is right, or wrong - but there is a third answer to this question; "it doesn't matter"
- andromedaworld 9y agoSeems like you're preaching nihilism and that kind of emptiness doesn't seem like any way to live life for me.
- stevedonovan 9y agoIt matters for the big things, but not for "stupid bullshit" as my dear wife calls it. Obviously there are things where principles and correctness are important; but what are they? It seems that we should prune the set of important things down to the minimum needed, so that we are not paralyzed by unimportance.
- Aloha 9y agoThis is the key here, and really the point I was trying to make.
- cynwoody 9y ago>Basically, don't worry about it. Mark Twain said, “Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born — a hundred million years — and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together.”