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I'm afraid of death. Very afraid. I'm pretty sure we're just meat sacks and when my heart stops beating that'll be the end of all that I am, and that scares the

• HashBasher 6y ago
  I also think that there's no afterlife. Soon as the brain stops working, everything goes dark. Eternal peace. I find it comforting in a strange way.
  • Trasmatta 6y ago
    > Eternal peace. I find it comforting in a strange way. I feel the same way. But I didn't always feel that way. It took time, a lot of anxiety, a bit of meditation, some drugs, and reading philosophy to get me to the point where I no long really fear death. Sure, the process of dying itself can still be scary, because of the potential for pain. But I'm not really afraid of what comes after. For OP or anyone else reading this dealing with similar death anxiety: I'd recommend a combination of therapy, philosophy, and some meditation. Psychedelics help some people, but they can also make it worse, so I'd be really careful unless you have a guide that you trust. The anxiety / fear / angst is a state that arises in your brain and body, as part of the survival instinct. It can also malfunction and kick into a much higher gear. It's possible to sort of re-wire your brain in such a way that it no longer responds to the idea of death in the same way. Your brain shapes your reality, and it's possible to change how you perceive and respond to things. It can just take some work, and maybe some therapy and medication in some cases.
  • polishdude20 6y ago
    I've actually thought of something that sort of comforts me when I think about death. Our brain is just a mix of chemicals interacting with eachother. When we die, our brain starts to decompose. This changes the chemicals in our brain. At some point, we go from being a being that knows the difference between itself and everything else to being nothing that doesn't know the meaning of self and non-self. We sort of meld into everything else. We lose our identity and become part of everything. It's all sort of hand wavey but it seems beautiful to me. Kind of like an Alan Watts vibe.
  • oleander73 6y ago
    Same. I really enjoying sleeping (i.e. being unconscious) and being dead would be the same.
• qrbLPHiKpiux 6y ago
  You sound young. You will change your thoughts as you age.
  • ajdude 6y ago
    31 years old here, and felt the same way that @koboll has felt for the past 10+ years. I don't know how old I have to get for that view to change, but if I could take an immortality pill I'd do it in a heartbeat.
    • ZephyrBlu 6y ago
      You want to be immortal just to assuage your fear of dying? That seems like a bit of an overreaction.
      • torgian 6y ago
        Not really. I’d be immortal if I could.
        • ZephyrBlu 6y ago
          I would consider it as well, but not because I'm afraid of dying. Rather because I think I would enjoy being able to learn about more things. Wanting to be immortal specifically to escape death seems odd to me.
          • pitaj 6y ago
            Part of my fear of death is missing out on the future. Well I get to visit other planets? Will I get to see the resolution to quantum mechanics / relativity? Will I get to see extraterrestrial life? Will I get to see humanity spread among the stars? I desperately want to see those things. And I'm extremely scared of missing out just because of how frail human bodies are.
      • Aeolun 6y ago
        Seems perfectly logical to me? I’d do it too. Getting tired of living and finding a way around immortality is a problem for future me. If I can’t, then I’ll eventually go crazy and the effect is more or less the same.
• corysama 6y ago
  You’ve already experienced being dead for 13.8 billion years. And, it wasn’t so bad. Was it? Dying looks like it’s probably not going to be fun. But, I’m not worried about being dead.
  • ip26 6y ago
    Not existing doesn't hurt, of course. But humanity is probably going to get up to a lot of cool shit we will miss out on.
    • throwawayboise 6y ago
      We've experienced a lot of cool shit that our grandparents missed out on. It's not like progress ever stops.
  • ericbarrett 6y ago
    This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round. —Philip Larkin, Aubade (italics original)
  • rewgs 6y ago
    I see this logic a lot, and it doesn't quite sit right with me because it doesn't really address the actual problem, which is: I'm not as afraid of being dead, so much as I am most afraid of the short time before. Knowing that I'm dying, that soon I will be dead. And also the finality of it. Pre-birth ended with my birth. Death will never end.
    • adrusi 6y ago
      That's not quite right. If you can't be afraid of actually being dead because you won't be experiencing anything, then you in fact won't be afraid in the moments before, so there would be no reason to be afraid of the moments before either. But you actually can be afraid of death, even though death doesn't come with any negative experiences, because you can and do care about things besides anticipated experiences. It's a common misconception that you can only care about experiences, but the counter to any conceptual argument that purports to prove that is that you do in fact care about some things that aren't experiences, death being a great example. My friend Ronny discusses this at some length in this podcast https://clearerthinkingpodcast.com/?ep=032 https://clearerthinkingpodcast.com/?ep=032
• pbronez 6y ago
  I’m sorry you feel that way. Death is inevitable. It is natural. It is universal. Birth, Death, and ideally reproduction in between- that’s the essence of life. You have to look beyond yourself as an individual. Humanity was here before you were born, but you were part of it in your ancestors’s genes. Humanity will continue after your death, and you will be part of it in the genes you pass down to your children, and the ripples of your actions in life. Death is a change, but it hold no more horror than pre-birth. Be at peace. Embrace your time. Live your life with purpose, love, humility and hope. Our ephemerality makes every moment meaningful, enjoy it.
  • nullsense 6y ago
    "it holds no more horror than pre-birth" is an excellent way to phrase how I think/feel about it. I wasn't able to be bothered by it then, and I won't be able to be bothered by it when it happens. I'm only able to be bothered by it now, so I mostly choose not to be bothered by it even now.
    • ericmay 6y ago
      You weren’t bothered by it because you had no previous experience of life. I think some (maybe many?) people aren’t afraid of “being dead” they’re afraid of all the things they know exist and are enjoyable. Life is the greatest, and most tragic blessing. Once you know you can’t un-know.
      • nullsense 6y ago
        You can unknow at the point you no longer posses the capacity to know. Which is why pre-birth and post-life are the same. The mistake is in projecting the current emotions of attachment to the current capacity to experience all the things to a time where no such capacity exists. If you do that you will feel afraid of death in this way. If you see pre-birth as fundamentally exactly the same as post-life and aren't bothered by the pre-birth phase, then you have no problems.
        • 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
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• Trasmatta 6y ago
  > There can't be anything worse than death. There just can't. Pretty much any amount of bad is preferable to infinite nothing. During a particularly horrific drug trip, I realized that this is very much not true. I thought I was stuck in an eternal state of suffering, of which there was no escape. The level of suffering was indescribable, and the thought that it was going to continue forever was unbearable. Now, I'm not really afraid of death. It's just the complete cessation of consciousness. Not that different from a deep, dreamless sleep. Infinitely preferable to that unceasing hell I thought I was stuck in.
  • pitspotter 6y ago
    What if we're in a simulation and getting to level 2 requires that one prefer consciousness not to cease upon death?
    • Trasmatta 6y ago
      This just sounds like a version of Pascal's Wager.
      • pitspotter 6y ago
        Yes! It wasn't until I'd posted the question that I realised its aptness for today (Easter Sunday). However I'm not saying people should believe in an afterlife. Rather I'm reflecting that not wanting there to be an afterlife could conceivably manifest as the flat belief that consciousness does not persist after death. And if I am the stupendous Creator running a simulation game for developing AGIs then, when it comes to selecting candidates for the next phase, the criterion of their wanting to persist might be the decisive one.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• nullsense 6y ago
  It doesn't seem like such a big deal to me. That we feel this way is what powers life, right? It's not an accident. It serves a function.
  • Trasmatta 6y ago
    > It's not an accident. It serves a function. The problem is when that function becomes counterproductive by filling you with so much anxiety about death that your ability to live your life is impeded. This happens to a lot of people. In some ways, us humans are too smart for our own good. We have the amazing ability to mentally time travel, and the ability to understand concepts like our own deaths. These higher level brain functions can clash with more fundamental drives, like the survival instinct. For many people, this conflict can become crippling.
• pope_meat 6y ago
  As someone who's always struggled with depression, your view is very strange and alien to me. Ceasing to exist in this hell is near the top of my wish list most days xD
  • Trasmatta 6y ago
    Hope you're getting the help you need. Depression can be literal hell.
• throwaway202515 6y ago
  It it wasn't for the fact that today/tomorrow is Easter, I don't think I would have responded like this to your comment. Of course, everyone will have to make their own decision about whether this story is worthy of believing. But, I feel I would be remiss if I did not point out that the whole point of Christianity, and especially Easter, is that Death is not the end. Christians believe that God who created the entire universe, took on human form. This man who was God in human flesh, Jesus, did all sorts of miracles. Finally, he was publicly executed by the Romans, and buried in a tomb. However, 3 days later, he rose from the dead! That is what Christians all over the world are celebrating today! That death is not the end, that Jesus conquered death, and because he rose, if we trust in him, we will also triumph over death. Death is no longer the feared end to everything, but rather just the doorway to enter into a an unimaginably more exciting and fulfilling life. I don't think anyone captures that sentiment as well as CS Lewis in the final paragraphs of his book, The Last Battle: "There was a real railway accident," said Aslan softly. "Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning." And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
  • stickfigure 6y ago
    Yeah... that's a bunch of nonsense.
  • geoduck14 6y ago
    Thanks for laying this out here like this.
  • Trasmatta 6y ago
    There are lots of stories about immortality, life after death, or rebirth, and there isn't any particularly compelling reason to believe this one over any of the others.
• dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
  Everything goes in cycles. All things die and are reborn in some fashion. Not in the Buddhist sense necessarily, but you can't truly end something, just change it so it no longer resembles what it was. You're made of the same stuff as everyone else, and can change to anything. Being sad of losing what you are is only normal, but the alternative of being the same forever is much scarier.
• axaxs 6y ago
  It is said that death is impossible for humans to understand. We don't have a concept of 'nothingness.' We like to imagine being in some void. More simply, I think we just cease to exist and don't feel anything. Just as you didn't exist before you were born, and so on. My only fear of death is for my family. They depend on me for so much. So, I took out giant life insurance policies, and that gives me a weird comfort in it.
  • Trasmatta 6y ago
    > It is said that death is impossible for humans to understand. We don't have a concept of 'nothingness.' We like to imagine being in some void. I think the closest we can get pre-death is the experience of being under general anesthesia. It's not a pit, or a void, or darkness. Just a complete cessation. (Of course, this is assuming that general anesthesia does actually cause the complete cessation of all conscious processes, and not just the formation of memory. I don't know enough to say whether we're entirely certain about that.)
    • rootusrootus 6y ago
      I agree, general anesthesia feels like the closest thing we can experience. It's a little startling to go under, only to instantly wake up a few hours later and realize you just lost those few hours without even a trace. When you're asleep at night, you don't lose the sense of time, but under general anesthetic it's completely gone. But I totally understand your point about how maybe it's just the amnesia part, maybe you do experience time, you just don't remember. I had the same kind of experience when I had a endoscopy, and I know that I had to be semi-conscious to participate in the procedure, but the time was completely lost to me and seemed instant, just like a general.
      • axaxs 6y ago
        Definitely somewhat conscious, for me. Last time I went under, the nurses said they had to hold me down and wondered who Charlotte was, because I kept mentioning her while fighting. Charlotte was a datacenter I was concerned about at work, pre anesthesia.
• aswanson 6y ago
  I dunno. I think its like my last visit to the dentist with to get my wisdom teeth removed. I had some serious necrotic pain and had to get them removed. Horrible pain. I sat there and the tech shot something in my arm. I said to myself, "That did nothing." I woke up getting rolled out of the office in the wheelchair, remembering none of it. That's how I picture death will be. Remembering nothing.
• axiom92 6y ago
  Back in March 2016, I took a couple of swimming lessons. Starting from scratch, I learned enough to be able to cross the pool using a desperate and random sequence of arm/leg strokes. I thought I knew enough to jump into the swimming pool in my apartment complex. It was a quiet evening, and I was the only person in the swimming pool. Without thinking too much, I jumped into the pool, started executing the weird moves, and managed to reach the middle of the pool. It was at that time that the horror began. Suddenly, I realized that I was in the middle of this 8' pool (I am 6' and some change) and that the water was pulling me in. I felt really helpless, and at that moment, it struck me that I might be drowning. This was it. I was 23, fresh out of college with a decent job, had a whole bunch of plans, and it was all going to evaporate just like that. I didn't get any flashbacks of the life I've had so far, but I clearly remember thinking that my parents will be really sad and that the travel plans I had for the next month will never materialize. I really did think that I was going to die. I screamed out for help, but there wasn't anyone around (and I might not have been making much sound). Fortunately, I didn't give up, and something told me to keep moving my arms and legs. I felt that I was finally moving ahead. I gave it everything I had and grabbed a corner of the pool. I came out and ran back to my apartment. All of this took about ~20 seconds or less. Still, I could have been dead (later that night, I looked up the statistics for the number of deaths per year due to drowning in a swimming pool, and it was a non-trivial number, ~4000/year in the US IIRC). So anyway, that incident changed my perspective of life and death altogether. I care about my life a lot, and I don't want to die, but something changed that day. I developed an urgency to get to things on my to-do list, because I realized that the lights can go off rather unceremoniously and without much notice. I also like to think that I'm less scared of death now, but who knows, really. I don't suggest having a near-death experience to lose your fear of death, but maybe try not to overthink things not in your hand in general. Some things are just too random to worry about.
  • gen220 6y ago
    In case it might save a life... there’s a technique [1] for survival where you exhale to remove buoyancy, sink to the bottom, and launch off the floor to get a gasp of air before repeating . It’s arguably the first technique people should teach/master when learning to swim as an adult, as it’s the ultimate “fallback technique” in a situation like one you describe. It’s widely taught in the US Navy, but applicable in freshwater swimming, as well. Drowning is indeed a shockingly common and particularly tragic way to die. Most multigenerational families personally know of at least one person that’s drowned, to put the statistic you shared in perspective. :/ [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drownproofing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drownproofing
• technological 6y ago
  I am not afraid of death but afraid of painful death. I just want to go away
  • elric 6y ago
    That's easily my biggest fear right there. Death, while inevitable, is a bitch. But a painful death, that's just cruel beyond words. I've had a couple of touch-and-go medical moments, and there have been instances where I wished for a quick and painless way to off myself. Not to use, but just as an option in case things got to that point.
• rootusrootus 6y ago
  I know exactly how you feel. If I really contemplate death -- not the act of dying, but of being dead, the infinite nothing, it takes my breath away. I strongly, strongly recommend you avoid thinking such thoughts at 2 AM, by the way. Objectively, I know it won't hurt any more than before I was born, and it won't really be infinite nothing because to experience that I'd have to have consciousness, which I won't have. But it really is difficult for me to really grasp the concept of my own non-existence. On a related note, sometimes I feel pangs of great sorrow when I look out on the world and realize I will one day not be able to experience this. Looking off into the hills, at the trees, the mountains, nature -- is so strikingly beautiful, that I can't imagine being deprived of it. Not exactly a rational fear, since again you can't feel the deprivation if you don't exist. But it strikes at odd times, just like grief for my dad, or my brothers, and in some ways it feels like shades of the same feeling. Sorry I've got nothing witty to say, but you are definitely not the only person to have such thoughts. I hope you find a way to keep them from tormenting you too much. I've mostly managed to cure the 2AM habit of staring into the abyss, which is a step in the right direction.
• ddingus 6y ago
  I can relate. For some of us, religion has answers. My wife's grannie lived long. She told us a bit too long! The world sort of got away from her. Husband, friends, gone and yet she continues on. One of her favorite things was to talk about her youth, how it all was. I recorded this for family to come and it gave her great comfort. Near her end she was not in pain, but just tired. She would awaken and sometimes say, "Oh, I am still here. Ok then, can I get my hot tea please?" She felt it was time to go home, where others had gone. She wondered why she was still here after so many close to her were already home, gone. I am not religious, so none of that works for me. I wish it did sometimes. I have lost people, some recently during this pandemic. I hate it. I hate that I too will be lost to someone to whom I matter. Hate that an awful lot. So far, nobody reports back, so this is it for us. I don't fear it as much. I fear losing mine more than being among the lost. I hate that lonely feeling when someone is dead, gone forever, no more, but for the parts of them they leave with others. As I travel, I have come to value experiences, others, and what I can share with younger people, those parts of me that will endure. Right now, I have balance. This is all OK. I know it will not endure, so I try hard to amplify the good and be present. When my spouse or I die, the other will be tested hard. We married young and sharing this journey with someone is the best! We may be here to help others thrive. I fear neither of us will when our time here together ends. I fear that a lot.
  • camjohnson26 6y ago
    These human experiences are part of what convinces those of us who are religious that there is an aspect of human experience that is not physical. We believe that deep fears and deep connections are evidence of a level of consciousness that goes beyond what other animals are capable of. Yes we do see instances of the animals displaying mourning for dead comrades or even mating for life, but those examples are noteworthy because they are the exception and because they appear to be human. If God has given humans a privileged place in the universe it gives our existence meaning and a hope after death.
    • ddingus 6y ago
      We may well be connected in ways we do not understand well at all. I have a high affinity with animals. They are far more capable and present than many of us recognize. Here is an observation for you: Communication. Higher order animals, and us humans have abstractions, and we humans have them deeper and to higher orders than we see, or can understand and relate to, in animals. Animals live their story. How they move, where they place themselves, and vocalizations all speak to their mind. They are like us, just simpler. When animals are in a harmonious environment with one another, and humans who grok them, it is robust. There is joy, wonder, pain, play, love, comfort, nature, and a sense of being present in this world. They have souls. While they may not burn as brightly as we may understand human souls do, they are unique as we are, travellers as we are. I strongly question whether we are unique as beings in all this. We are more complex, and can build on our understanding of one another and the world around us in ways animals do not because of that complexity. Otherwise, we are all beings here. What we can do suggests precisely nothing about what, if anything comes after death. So far, nobody reports back, and we have no definitive record from anyone but us, here alone but for our furry companions. Please, do not take that as some bad or negative statement to your faith. I simply do not share it, despite seeking it at times. Like the animals, we are here for a time and that is all. Or, should this all be a cycle or transitory state, it is for them too. It may all be one body conscious, for that matter and it concentrates, ebbs and flows through beings of all kinds. Nobody knows. Maybe we can know, and I hope so one day we do. Take what comfort you can fellow traveler! It is all anyone who walks this world can do. And by all means, enjoy the ride, maybe leave it better than you found it
• asddubs 6y ago
  yeah but you won't even be around for the part where you don't exist or be aware of it, it'll be someone elses problem
• danybittel 6y ago
  > I'm afraid I might change my mind. There's no reason to be afraid of your future self. He/she will do and decide what's good and right, with all the knowledge you earned up till know, plus anything to come. Why limit to your current self? ;-)
• frongpik 6y ago
  Well, that's a rather depressing view on life. I'm on the opposite side of this spectrum. This makes me a rather flegmatic person and perhaps the only thing that makes me at least somewhat worried is not doing enough during my lifetime. If you want to join the ranks of flegmatic people, I'd suggest to diversify your bookshelf with Plato, Hermes and Hesiod.
• 867-5309 6y ago
  a friend's wife is a doctor and her "lights off, that's it" attitude has never sat well with me. I'm surprised to see it repeated so much in this section. for me, I cannot accept that these consciousnesses and shared reality are destroyed I'm probably quoting someone somewhere sometime with "our bodies are vessels, driven by souls, enroute to infinity", but I think this is the closest approximation to what I mixedly believe about life and death evidently we are unique in our animal kingdom for having this soul/consciousness, whether it be planted or evolved, created or random I like to toy with the ideas among civilisations of the belief that their afterlife can be envisioned here on Earth, passing on to a pre-imagined place I live in the hope that those I love are reunited in death, on some remote-but-familiar plane of existence. the problem with this is that memory must be preserved to some degree and transcribed, as it would be odd e.g. to reunite with my father in his infancy. but problems and their questions such as these rest more easily than the cliche answers to the broader "what happens when" at first I was hesitant to quote Iron Maiden lyrics here but then remembered a discussion from the other week on rap music, and the beautiful refrain seems poignant, so here goes "I will hope, my soul will fly, So I will live forever. Heart will die, my soul will fly, And I will live forever." I'd say I'm roughly half afraid, half curious about what will happen when I die, but will never be persuaded it is nothing, so long as I live.. ultimately hope, belief, and online pondering are of little value, just more locks on the door to the unknown
  • albertgoeswoof 6y ago
    Honestly I can’t understand this perspective, despite having come from a religious background and heard it many times. When you turn your computer off the RAM is erased, the state is lost. Our brains are running on RAM. Perhaps we have persistent, non-volatile storage too, but we have no way to access and continue running our conscious, outside of our brain. There’s nothing to fear about that- it is the world we’ve always lived in, and the state after your brain stops processing is no different from the state of the universe before you were born.
    • 867-5309 6y ago
      the difference is that computers are manmade, they do not have a consciousness to wonder where they came from. we know how RAM works and that it was designed to forget. the bits that once flowed through them had a predefined source and destination. when they were volatile they were electronic in nature, but once discarded reduced to atoms and heat as exhaust I agree there is currently no known way to transfer the state of a human brain, like there was no concept of RAM back when religions were started
• warent 6y ago
  my perspective on this evolved over time to understand it in a comforting way. Inside our bodies, cells are constantly dying, and new cells are returning in their place. Death isn't something that happens someday; it's something that is always with us. In this way, we see life and death aren't separate; they're the same thing. There is no "someday I'll be dead." There is only a continuum of change. A cloud in the sky doesn't spontaneously appear and vanish from existence by magic. It appears to be magic, but really we know it just changes forms. Existence and nonexistence are magical inventions of the human mind. Reality is beyond that. So we have this concept of death as being in a dreamless sleep forever, but that's just a concept of the mind. Whatever we think death is, it's just a thought. Death is beyond thought and concept, so our understanding is forever inaccurate. We talk about nothingness as if it's being locked up in any abyss. But where did the universe come from? Well, it came from nothingness. If that nothingness can birth a universe and reality, returning to that after death isn't so bad... you're just going home.
• skissane 6y ago
  > I'm pretty sure we're just meat sacks and when my heart stops beating that'll be the end of all that I am, and that scares the shit out of me. Should one be "pretty sure"? I take it you are assuming that materialism is true, that the mind is ultimately dependent on a functioning physical brain for its existence, such that if the brain permanently ceases to function, the associated mind will permanently cease to exist. But, what if some day, in the infinite future, random processes cause atoms to spontaneously reassemble into a working brain, and not just any working brain, but a proper continuation of your individual particular brain, in proper continuity with your last conscious moment before death? Would that not be a genuine personal afterlife? You can say the probability of such an event is unimaginably small, but can we say that it is absolutely zero? And if it is not absolutely zero, then given an infinite future, any event with non-zero probability will almost surely eventually occur, including that one. Following this line of thought, you can arrive at the conclusion that an afterlife is possible, maybe even likely, maybe even highly likely. But unlike religious conceptions of the afterlife, we cannot be confident that it will make any sense – it is just as likely (even more likely) to be the absurd hell of a solitary hallucinating Boltzmann brain [0] floating through the cold blackness of space, as the final triumph of the just and the good which the Abrahamic religions promise. In an infinite universe, how certain can you really be that anything is ever permanent, including the cessation of one's existence? Faced with the potential infinity of the future, being certain, even just being "pretty sure", that any end is permanent seems to me to be having far more confidence than one rationally ought to have. If the choice is between a religious afterlife which makes sense, and a non-religious afterlife of infinite absurdity, maybe we ought to hope that (some) religion is true? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain
• siliconunit 6y ago
  after many many years of similar dread I came to this conclusion: I have been 'dead' for the past 13 billions years give or take, but then I have been incredibily lucky and won the 'consciousness lottery', that is, for a brief amount of time, just a flickering spark, I know what reality is, I experience what the Universe is, and carbon life on a still beautiful planet (hopefully we'll steer in the right direction), this to me outweights most of the fear... think how incredibly rare is conscious life, and you got super lucky to be aware of it, and yes the ride will end, but what a ride compared to a lump of carbon floating in the endless void forever. We are lucky.