After reading the terrific "Denial of Death" I asked a few friends if they felt dread knowing that would one day die. They said they don't worry about it and I cannot relate. Seems to me the entire meaning of life and the point of it all is to just LIVE.
It follows that knowing of your own eventual annihilation must be terrifying. Sure you can take refuge in false delusions or just ignore it. But if you're not afraid of death, are you really living? Are you really respecting life properly when you're not terrified to lose it?
I think everyone faces death differently. I’m not happy about the possibility, but I don’t expect it to bother me after I’m gone. It’s just something I can’t control, and by my nature, I don’t waste much thought on those kinds of things. All one can do is accept them.
That said, I love life and I wish I had a thousand more to live and choose different paths. It’s like a game where I’ll only ever play one character. I’m not keen to die, but I hope I’ll face it with grace and courage when the time comes.
Yep, it didn't bother me for ~eternity before I existed. I think it'll be the same after.
Approaching death does scare me though. I thought Christopher Hitchens captured that feeling well:
"It will happen to all of us, that at some point you get tapped on the shoulder and told, not just that the party’s over, but slightly worse: the party’s going on — but you have to leave. And it’s going on without you. That’s the reflection that I think most upsets people about their demise."
Hitchens sure had a way with words. Yeah, I think that would bother me as well. It's easier if death just kind of sneaks up on you and takes you out. It's a lot harder when the doctor tells you he's coming sometime in 2-5 years.
Strangely, in my early twenties, I was very afraid of dying, for all the things I could have done, and all the things I never understood or felt, and so on.
I was lucky to meet and marry a wonderful person that helped me push through all the obstacles I imagined were between me and all those things (I mention them because I would never have done all I did without their presence), and I started doing all the things I would've missed if I were dead.
Being around 30 now, I've done so much more than most people I've met, and than I imagine I would in a lifetime when I was 20, that I feel comfortable with my life. I know that I have not wasted my time, and I'm proud of all I've done and am still doing.
Things like aneurysms and car accidents happen to everyone, and I don't fool myself - I could die in 15 minutes slipping out of the bath - but I'm fine with myself, at this point at least.
(I'm sorry this is probably not very interesting, I'm letting myself ramble a little.)
I'm not generally afraid of death because I think of myself as lucky to have been alive at all.
It's not always easy to feel lucky like that, but it ought to be. A bigger question is: why don't we all feel lucky to have been alive, every moment of the day? In any situation of life and any circumstance, isn't it awe-inspiring that we're experience this slice of life in an uncaring universe? That we're being and not un-being? But for most of us 99.999% of the time we don't feel that way.
Because you can't be "unluckily" never-been-alive. If you didn't exist, there wouldn't be a "you" to be lucky or unlucky. You can't be "un-being". It's an immediate logical contradiction. Being alive is the baseline. Being alive is a tautology.
Of course, you're still free to feel lucky being alive. But it’s an irrational feeling. (Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.)
It follows that knowing of your own eventual annihilation must be terrifying. Sure you can take refuge in false delusions or just ignore it. But if you're not afraid of death, are you really living? Are you really respecting life properly when you're not terrified to lose it?