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Anyone else feeling anxious over their own mortality after reading this?
by endorphine 4y ago
Anyone else feeling anxious over their own mortality after reading this?
- weberer 4y agoNot really. It was inevitable before, and its still inevitable now.
- brookst 4y agoYep. All that changes is information about the shape of the probability curve for how many days are left.
- sh4rks 4y agoThat's why you meditate on your death everyday
- leetrout 4y agoBingo. Memento mori. https://dailystoic.com/memento-mori/ https://dailystoic.com/memento-mori/ And other "bad things" with negative visualization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_visualization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_visualization
- CRWW 4y agoI've been looking for a meaningful challenge-coin like something to keep on my person, and coincidentally been wanting to look into stoicism more. Thanks for the link.
- depr 4y agoIndeed. It's already beneficial to think about your own death for just 10 to 20 minutes a couple of times. Or imagine that you have only one year to live.
- drowsspa 4y agoI actually envy people who have such a drive to live to the point of battling cancer for so long. If I got diagnosed I definitely would just give up.
- paulcole 4y agoSame. I’m 40 w/ a chronic illness already. I’d really have to be talked into chemotherapy if it came to that — and I’m pretty sure I’d still decline.
- 2-718-281-828 4y agosame ... chemo with all its uncertainties and pain. can't see myself go through that. but you only really know when you're there. survival instinct can just kick in when death is around the corner.
- qorrect 4y agoAgreed on all points. Thinking about developing a crippling disease is the only time I've been thankful that you can buy a pistol in any walmart.
- zetazzed 4y agoJust as one datapoint, I had stage 4 cancer in my 40s. They described the chemo as one of the most intense courses they can give. Took seven months or so. It sucked but was very doable - you just get up, show up, feel sick, then do it again. Don’t think too hard about it. Obviously ymmv, but I would not advise thinking of heavy chemo as a guaranteed torture chamber.
- altdataseller 4y agoHow old are you now and how long have you had stage 4?
- MrGilbert 4y agoEver since I lost my parents to cancer and sarcoidosis, I'm more aware of life. However, as I'm currently struggling financially, I'm afraid of every day I spent thinking about my finances and not my life. I think it takes a lot of courage to face your last tweet...
- solardev 4y agoI can only hope to be lucky enough to know when I'm going to for. Having a few days or months to say goodbye etc. would be great.
- robofanatic 4y agoBut that just elongates the pain for everyone involved (apologies for my English) I prefer to go in a snap.
- solardev 4y agoThat's a good point though.
- lr4444lr 4y agoOnce you have kids (my apologies assuming you don't if you do, but perhaps other readers should be aware), you start to feel that every day - not only worrying how they'll be cared for materially, but also how they'd cope with the loss developmentally.
- jacquesm 4y agoSpot on. This is pretty much the driving force in my life right now. I haven't been particularly kind to this body and the damage is starting to add up to the point that I wonder how much longer it will work and posts like these ram that home in ways that are impossible to ignore.
- CamelRocketFish 4y agoHow haven’t you been kind to your body?
- jacquesm 4y agoBike accident (utterly self inflicted), 1000's of all-nighters, too little exercise (which I guess you can always point at, I bike a lot but that's not balanced exercise), diet, overstressed joints/muscles by doing too much physical work beyond my ability (usually when remodeling houses or constructing stuff). Coupled with a nice assortment of genetic heritage and some regular diseases (COVID, kidneys, gall bladder, bad lung) and it starts to really add up, the comparison between when I turned 50 and today is really harsh, it's not so much a gradual descent as it is a drop off a cliff.
- ronyeh 4y agoSorry to hear.... I'm a fan of your work and your writing. Hope you can put as much focus into improving your health (sleep, diet, mobility) as you do your work. (I have had the same tendencies so I know...)
- 4y ago
- scarface74 4y agoI’ve been anxious about my mortality since Covid hit. Not because I was necessarily afraid of dying, I was afraid of dying with regret and not living life to the fullest. So my wife and I decided to just be “hybrid digital nomads” flying across the US with a few weeks in Mexico and Canada so we could be in US time zones. We will be living in Florida from September through mid March and traveling the other six months while our place is professionally managed by a property manager. We sold our cars, threw almost everything we owned away that wouldn’t fit in three suitcases and rented our house out. We will sell it mid 2024.
- jacquesm 4y agoWow, that's pretty brave! Congratulations for actually acting on it. I have a similar impulse but I'm completely tied down by responsibilities and family so no way to act on it. Especially having kids is an enormous factor in things like this and dealing with their future and how to best prepare them for it.
- scarface74 4y agoMy younger (step)son is 20. I wanted to ease him into taking responsibility. We rented the house to him and two of his best friends who we have known forever and we know their parents at a discount. Their rent just covers interest and taxes and the three non fixed utility bills. We still cover the internet, yard, HOA, pest, trash, etc. We were going to do that at least two years. But, I was using my stock vests to offset the costs and well you know how stock is doing these days. Next year we will add a set fee to partially offset some of those expenses like a real apartment does.
- jacquesm 4y agoI sincerely hope that you can make it work for the future as well, it sounds like a dream life to me.
- godzillabrennus 4y agoI always live and love like I’m dying so not really. My girlfriend recently asked me what I dream about and I replied honestly saying “I don’t dream, I live my dreams.” Then again, I am in the line of work best described as willingly agreeing to put an airplane together as I fall out of the sky. Not a whole lot of downtime in my days.
- no_wizard 4y agoIf this is inappropriate I apologize Whet line of work are you in exactly, if you don’t mind sharing?
- fuzzfactor 4y agoAccurate terminology. The main reason I've been servicing airplane engines in flight for my employer is because on my own I already had "to put an airplane together as I fall out of the sky."
- grrandalf 4y agoYes. But I think I would be more anxious if I had not read these two books. * book "Staring into the Sun" * book "How we Die" Eliding my 2c on these books -- it's your 2c that matters. LLAP
- PartiallyTyped 4y agoI had seriously contemplated suicide multiple times in my life (about 6 so far), and every time I managed to escape the intrusive thoughts. I have a heart condition and I may just drop dead, thus living alone means that there is nobody to regurgitate me. The way I have reconciled this is through accepting that I have already died, thus every day is a gift.
- jacquesm 4y agoThat's probably the most powerful 'life hack' that I've ever heard of.
- PartiallyTyped 4y agoOops. This was supposed to write resuscitate.
- dredmorbius 4y agoRegurgitation resuscitates food ;-)
- brightsize 4y agoThat was a wonderful comic slip-up and brought a smile to my face. TY for that! And now I'm wondering if I can go to a lawyer and get a "no-regurgitate" directive put in place. :-)
- Beaver117 4y ago“Why should I fear death? If I am, then death is not. If Death is, then I am not." - Epicurious
- jacquesm 4y agoIt's 'Epicurus' (auto correct strikes again?), and for all of his wisdom I think the detachment is not one that I subscribe to because fear of death can well come from the fear of no longer being there to support those that are dependent on you. If you limit your universe to yourself then it obviously gets a lot easier.
- damontal 4y agoI was in the hospital with a blood clot and was told by the ER doctor that I could die at any moment. Quotes like the above, ideas, feelings about meaning, thoughts about my wife and kids all were completely absent. I just felt blank and completely alone. No words or concepts or language could penetrate that feeling.
- noufalibrahim 4y agoContemplation of one's own mortality and limited time on earth is a daily practice in most traditional religions for a long time.
- no_time 4y agoI just feel that in general. Lying in bed on most nights I can "feel" my body disintegrating. Forever, irreversibly as I drift into cold nothingness. To end on a positive note, I still find it less terrifying than the alternative, which is living forever.
- umvi 4y ago> To end on a positive note As a religious person this is actually like the most negative note imaginable for me. I mean, sure, I'll grant you life after death is "terrifying" in a "fear of the unknown" sense, but I would definitely prefer seeing deceased loved ones again and continuing to learn and progress after death vs. ceasing to exist.
- Sirened 4y agoI don't know, I've heard so many stories of people that, after 90+ years, are just bored of life. It's unimaginable to me now but I've only been an adult for a small fraction of the time they've been and so maybe you can really just run out of things to do.
- umvi 4y ago> I don't know, I've heard so many stories of people that, after 90+ years, are just bored of life. Would they still feel that way if they had youthful energy and a more elastic mind, I wonder? Hard to tell. I myself hope I'm more like Donald Knuth in my old age - still curious and learning and progressing.
- bamboozled 4y agoMaybe, my grandmother was like this at 80, she had a great life but she’d seen enough, eaten enough cakes, hugged enough grandchildren, she wasn’t depressed just felt satisfied. She was very peaceful, she died at 86.
- no_time 4y agoAn eternity to be concious is a long time. Over an infinite amount of time it can go wrong in an infinite number of ways. Seeing your loved ones is great. Exhausting the total combination of <1hr long conversations with them over an infinite amount of time, not so much. What do you even do after that? You've spoken with them about everything you can express with english words. Do you continue to make up new concepts forever to keep yourself entertained?
- CyanBird 4y agoVos qui transitis nostri memores rogo sitis Quod sumus hoc eritis Fuimus aliquando quod estis Heu quantus est noster dolor
- jacquesm 4y agoMy high school Latin has faded to the point that I resorted to Google translate, here is what it says: "You who remember our passing, I beg you to be what we are, you will be. We were once what you are Alas, how great is our grief"
- zuno 4y ago"The origin of the saying of the dead, which emphasises the nothingness of earthly life, is attributed to Arabic poetry. Thus the Arab poet ʿAdī b. Zayd, as he rode past graves with the king of Hira (c. 580 CE), has the dead exclaim to the king: "We were what you are; But the time will come, And it will come to you swiftly, when ye shall be what we are." Like the dance of death and the triumph of death, the motif is emblematic of the medieval admonition memento mori. Simultaneous depiction of the topoi is common, for example in Francesco Traini's mid-fourteenth-century fresco Triumph of Death, which depicts the three living and the three dead. The legend was also integrated in the Dance of Death by Kientzheim. A fresco from the Isefjord workshop in the church of Tuse (Denmark) from the 15th century shows three mounted kings on the hunt, who are met by three dead kings from whom maggots and worms escape. Each of them is assigned a banner. On the first dead man's banner is written: "Vos qui transitis n(os)t(r)i me(m)ores rogo sitis" (You who are passing by, I beg you: Remember us), on the second: "Quod sumus hoc eritis" (What we are now, you shall become one day) and on the third: "Fuimus aliquando quod estis" (We were once what you are now). Above their heads one reads: "Heu qua(n)tus est noster dolor" (Oh, how great is our pain)." https://old.reddit.com/r/latin/comments/n8dzuo/quod_sumus_hoc_eritis/gxhxeyx/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/latin/comments/n8dzuo/quod_sumus_ho...
- didgetmaster 4y agoWhen I was in my 30s and had two small children, my appendix burst. It turned into a fairly routine procedure to remove it and get me back on my feet; but I realized that if I had lived even 100 years ago it probably would have been fatal. Near death experiences can change your whole perspective. When I was young and single, I did all kinds of crazy things that could easily have ended me. Once I got married and had children, I definitely became much more conservative in the personal risks I was willing to take because it wasn't just about me anymore. Tomorrow is promised to no one, but each of us can do things to minimize risk.
- NaturalPhallacy 4y ago>When I was in my 30s and had two small children, my appendix burst. It turned into a fairly routine procedure to remove it and get me back on my feet; but I realized that if I had lived even 100 years ago it probably would have been fatal.* I've lost count of how many "ordinary" infections I've lived through thanks to antibiotics. One would have for sure killed me. A puncture wound on the bottom of my foot in a dirty river in the south. We're not even 100 years into having antibiotics. A species just getting started tbh. I wonder what will come next that is similarly "magical" to antibiotics.
- jacquesm 4y agoMost people older than 40 are living on borrowed time given the medical progress of the last 100 years. I would have been dead twice without now.