How often do you think about the fact that one day you're going to die?

I used to think about dying all the time when I was younger. Now I just can't be bothered.

I'd love to be able to think like that. But just because it's a problem with no solution doesn't mean it's any less of a problem. Anyway, I can't help thinking that there IS a solution, a way in which I can come to terms with my own mortality, but I just haven't found my way to it yet. I don't know. It's not that I'm scared of death, I think, it's more that since I will end and everything I do or achieve will end, it's hard work trying to locate the point of existence. It's more LIFE that's problem, once you consider death. That's how I feel on bad days, anyway... (and yes, I know I was supposed to have got over all this when I was 17!)

Not that I always do that latter part... I just really don't worry about death. Because you know what? After you're dead, it doesn't matter what you did or didn't do! You're dead! The end!

I'm kind of comforted by that thought when things seem overwhelming.

Things like the "biological clock" and the realisation that I'm aging and my mind and body are making some things I used to be able to do/do impossible or unpleasant shape my life.

But worrying about your own death, worrying about mortality is just futile. My approach isn't "head in the sand" - but your approach is like Canute ordering the tides to go back.

Stop fretting, just bloody get on with it.

And I think about the fact that it is possible for me to die today, all the time, also. More from the point of view of the person I love, though. Every time I'm running across roads, I imagine what would happen in the hours and days after I'm smashed by a minibus, and it's intolerable.

No, I don't want to be immortal, I want to be comfortable with my mortality. Of course, most of the time I'm not thinking of death and I'm just getting on with life and happy to do so. Every now and then, lying in bed awake or whatever, the death angst can get to me. The thing is, if I were dying of cancer and had six weeks to live, you wouldn't be saying to me: 'Just stop worrying about it and get on with your life.' With death so close it would be impossible to avoid and it would be imperative to find some kind of peace with the idea. And yet that closeness is a relative thing. Actually, we're all close to death and although of course the vast majority of time I should be just getting on with life, there are meta-moments when I sort of try to grasp the whole thing and try (without great success) to get to the personal truth of it.

If that makes any sense...

Lately, I've been having this stupid, obsessive fear of dying prematurely. For example, if I'm standing next to an open window, I may think: "What if someone accidentally pushes me out of this window and I'll fall and die?" Or if I'm smoking weed, I may think "What if I'll start feeling sick and choke on my own vomit?" I know thinking like this is stupid, since anyone of us could accidentally die anyday, but it's an obsession that's hard to shake off.

*laughs* In fact, the timing of this topic couldn't have been better. Just yesterday I was thinking about what plans I should lay out for my burial once that day comes. I'm currently weighing whether to get buried with my parents, which would mean I would have to be cremated, or try to find a plot somewhere close to where my dad and maternal grandparents are buried, so that I could be buried (regularly -- no cremation) with any possible future husband of mine, should I ever get married. I'd say this would be some serious thinking about death, particularly mine!

Mersault...

I'm not so sure that my advice to someone diagnosed with cancer would be any different from my advice to anyone else. I'd probably say something along the lines of "do more of the things that enjoy, that bring you and the people around you happiness, do less of the things that seem useless and cause you pain."

Because medical diagnoses, like anything else, are fallable. Doctors can be wrong.

Because really, what does the knowledge of your own mortality bring? If it brings you a sense of "carpe diem" and "it's better to regret something you have done than something you haven't done" (as it has to me) then well and good. If it makes you paralysed with the thought of your own finity, then what is the point?

You are going to die. Everybody has their own way of dealing with that. You can think "Oh my god, there's so much to do, how will I pack it all in?" and become paralysed. Everyone has to come to terms with their own way of dealing.

No matter what you do, it's fraught with risk. You can plan for the future and delay your gratification and work hard, and die at 30 from a freak accident. You can live for today and be a hedonist and find yourself miserable at the age of 80 cause you thought you'd be dead by now, and my god, you're not and there's nothing left for you to do.

I don't know. It's not something I think about, or something that particularly bothers me so I really can't understand your state of flap.

Tuomas, that is called THE PARANOIDS and it is caused by smoking too much dope!

I know that weed has to do with it, but I'd say weed induces and amplifies my latent fears rather than causes them. Besides I've been having these fears lately too, even though nowadays I smoke weed maybe once in two months.

It's funny, I was reading a tiny bit of Montaigne via an old Xerox copy of excepts that was lying around the house. Montaigne himself starts from this proposition, but then he keeps on going back and forth on the subject enough within said essay as to create a total uncertainty about what his final thoughts on the subject are, regardless of which side he ends on. Which, certainly, is a good metonym for the vaguaries of thinking on death.

Now, hmmm, I guess dying is just something that I accept (but yeah, I hope its not for a long time).

Being human, among other things, means looking for meaning in meaningless events, or, perhaps more accurately, imposing meaning on them. It is one of the wonders of our minds that it has the strength to impose meaning on the meaningless and make it stick.

As for where one's thinking finally arrives in this matter, that is an individual matter. Obviously, there is no one right answer. I can say that it is a very fruitful subject to think about and calls forth from our depths ideas and emotions we rarely meet any other way.

Word.

A friend of mine's grandfather died the other day. He was 97. He'd had a really full life, but the past couple of years lost his sight and his hearing mostly and so couldn't enjoy living the way he had before. He'd always talk about wanting to die, but it didn't seem like a morbid thing. More like "Hey, it's been fun, but enough of this. I'd like to move on and see my wife again". And now he's moved on like he wanted.

People don't usually die of Crohn's, do they?

I'm just a hypochondriac with no health insurance.

Mmm.... mushroom.

Or looking at my parents, it WILL happen.

For my own death it's more like "shit, just don't let me burn to death, please."

Me too, except replace fairly often with occasionally.

I wish I could convince myself of something fantastical like VIc has, but that's just not me.

I think about the possibility of dying almost every day. About what it would be like to die young, and how it would be to die soon. Sometimes I really want to die, though that's a thought I'd never act on. I know somehow that I'm going to live a long life.

Why is that a problem?

That said, it really seems a question of temperament. I guess it's possible that most people have 'accepted' death and my fixation stems from my inability to deal; but the older I get, the more it seems rather that everyone is in fucking denial, and my denial system just doesn't function very well.

And lest anybody suspect me of copping some 'morbidist' attitude in this regard: I only say it because I suspect most of the time it does function very well (for me)--thankfully.

I dunno if it's a problem. Probably for the best. I called it "a bad thing about dying" and it has nothing to do with dying, really. I take it back, I suppose.

Don't want to speak in truisms or nothing, but how is life feasible without mortality? A life without death and the miseries is unknowable. A life without death that still contained the everyday suffering would be horrific punishment.

Explain.

The divorce/breakup rate would be 100%. To be immortal is to take on infinity as a lifestyle, i.e. you didn't understand the lesson.

Are you arguing that the reaon why Human A treats Human B badly has something to do with the fact that both will die? If so, I'd like to hear your theory.

Meanwhile, I'm arguing that words like Love and Happiness are only a product of the awareness of mortality. Outside of this limitation, the words would be meaningless.

I'm not talking being aware vs. being unaware, but rather awareness of mortality vs. awareness of immortality.

Unless Brian sees deathlessness as a surprise, a sick bonus, at the end of this shit.

strangely, though, i very often find myself totally RESIGNED to the fact that i'm going to die. like earlier today i was crossing the road (after looking both ways) and it occurred to me that there was a chance, very slight, that i might be hit by a car. and i just thought, "well, if it happens, it happens." not a suicidal impulse, just a queer, almost peaceful feeling. does this ever happen to anyone else?

I don't worry about death so much as wasted time. I think I'll die with hardly any friends and certainly not a partner, and that troubles me far more than death itself.

Bloody hell, I typed this out yesterday, and guess what's been happening today.

Yep, it's been raining here today. All bleeding day long.

Blimey.... Possibly a sign?

A corollary of mortality. Age is the incremental form of death. Death the distilled form of age.

(which any vision of immortality has to discard to be attractive)

My conception of imortality is this discard.

none of the other difficulties of life seem to be derived from mortality.

Except for all of them. Difficulties = things which can hurt/obstruct you. Hurt = incremental subjection to death. Obstruct = incremental subjection to time = overarching subjection to death.

I mean, are you saying that the answer, in an existence without death, to questions such as "When will I find love?" or "How will I find happiness?" is "Don't worry, it will happen - it must, statistically"?

I think all but the extremely fortunate would have a far better shot at either given more than a few years to figure it out.

If so, it's also statistically very likely that any given person will be raped, tortured, or otherwise unfairly wounded.

Unless you suspect they're also derived from subjection to death. Or that, like love and happiness, they have no meaning outside the context of mortality.

Are you arguing that the reaon why Human A treats Human B badly has something to do with the fact that both will die? If so, I'd like to hear your theory.

That's exactly what I'm saying among other things. Mortality rules garbage-in as well as garbage-out; competition for resources is predicated upon limited resources and their necessity. The necessity derived ultimately again from what primitive thermodynamic machines we are, trapped in a cooling universe, on a savage zero-sum planet. The game casts the players in its brutal likeness.

Outside of this limitation, the words would be meaningless.

Maybe friction is the real problem. Maybe "love and happiness" are the "sick bonus" for [awareness of] all this, the emergent product of a bitter process. Or maybe they're not; maybe they exist first, and death/time/pain is the injury given that still echoes through everything: does Jesus come to Finish His Plan or Clean Up His Mess?

I dunno, but really: aren't the "humiliations" enough all by themselves?

where 'they' = rape, torture, unfair wounds

(though I'm not sure fairness is necessarily relevant)

primitive compared to what?

There is too much I want to do for me to spend much time thinking on it.

For the last 48 hours I haven't been sleeping at all, and unable to be in a room without someone else in. I can't eat or go out. What should I do? Councilling? Pills? I fear if I go to a GP I'll be sectioned. Please help this pain go away.

l&d - It sounds like it would be worth exploring these feelings with a counsellor. I would personally try to hang onto the thought that you don't have to solve this problem right now, at this very moment, so you can relax a bit - that you will take some action to help it in due course.

If I still couldn't relax,eat etc. I would got to professional help. I'm sure you can expect a sympathetic response from your GP.

This Zen saying sometimes helps me though:

To learn to be always in a state of meditation means never to let your vital energy wane. You would never allow it to do so if it were certain that you were to die tomorrow. It wanes because you forget about death. Grit your teeth, fix your gaze, and observe death at this moment. You have to feel it so strongly that it seems as if it's attacking you. Fearless energy comes from this. At this moment death is right before your eyes. It's not something you can afford to neglect.

- Suzuki Shosan (1579-1655)