Are you afraid of death?

[Ruby Slippers]

Based on your response, I have to believe that you have no idea how dark it can get. Your response sounds almost whimsical compared to my experience.

It's very arrogant of you to assume that your pain is worse than anybody else's.

 

I don't feel the need to describe my darkest, most personal thoughts and experiences to the level of detail that you do on this forum, but believe me, I've been there.

 

I'd still rather be in a dark place than dead.

[Clair93]

I'm not at all afraid of death, maybe a little afraid of the pain of what causes my death and worried about the pain and sadness it will cause to the people who care about me. I was dead for 13.5 billion years and it didn't feel bad at all. Our consciousness is not gonna be there, so what's to fear? There's no darkness for us to experience forever, it will be just like before we were born

[bubbaganoosh]

When I was a young man, the thought of death rattled me because I was too young to die.

 

I saw a huge amount of death in Vietnam and at the time was too scared to dwell on it mainly because most of us had the attitude that "better him than me" and it sounds like a horrible thing to say but it's the way it was.

 

Now that I'm 66 and health wise, not real good with respiratory problems that wont get better, I think about death and I'm not a scared as I once was. I had my time and I'm the only one left in my family so maybe if there's a other side in heaven I would get to see my family again.

 

If anything that bothers me would be leaving my kids. But then the only thing that you can guarantee in life is dying and paying taxes.

[Ninjainpajamas]

I'm going to go on a bit of a rant here, but personally I don't find the thought of not being alive at one time in any way comforting to the fact that your own life or existence will end some day.

 

Before I was born, I didn't know my mother, my father, friends and family, people that I've loved. That all hadn't happened yet, it wasn't apart of my consciousness or "reality", and I wasn't aware of anything that had not happened yet.

 

Those things have happened now, whatever I was before I am not the same being now, it carries no relation to what I didn't have or was before this life, as far as I know now I have much more potentially to lose, I have built a life of experience and people whom mean very much to me and I will miss them terribly when they are gone.

 

Maybe this is just a one off shot of an experience that you only get one chance at, maybe you became something out of nothing for a moment and will fade into the nothingness in which you came...whatever that "nothing" is...it doesn't really matter if you are essentially unaware or lack consciousness as we know it. And on the contrary, maybe you live forever, maybe like a drop of water you evaporate into the sky, back into that big cloud whence you came dripping down from.

 

I do not fear death much any longer, at times like many I have invited it, worried If I couldn't become the man I wanted to be, could I ever live up to my own expectations? and how do I accomplish this all alone? maybe because of my troubled childhood and experiences I'd just become a stone cold abusive @sshole like my grandfather, or abusive like my parents who felt more sorry for themselves than they ever did about me and always victimized themselves while I was left to pick up the pieces, and now I'm supposed to be "perfect" and this great person after all of that, only to be criticized for faults and imperfections after surviving all of that? Do I even deserve the chance or am I destined to become a product of my environment like so many others too selfish to acknowledge or unwise enough to control or change their own behavior?

 

I use to be terrified at the thought of dying but that was mainly due to the religious influence at the time, going to heaven or hell, nobody being able to answer my questions at a very young age about death, life or anything else for that matter that was satisfying to my own reason, at a young age I realized I wasn't going to be a "believer" or a man of any kind of faith even though I've attended private schooling and been in that environment long enough that I "should" be religious by all intents and purposes, but faith had never given me any satisfaction or answers to the questions I had sought, It definitely wasn't there for me as a child when I needed it most, every moment I called upon it, it felt like it fell on deaf ears, I realized I needed to save myself at some point. Although at the same time I developed a firm belief in who I was and what kind of man I wanted to become, life for me has been about fulling embracing that even if it doesn't make "sense" to anyone else.

 

I've only found relief in acceptance in the fact that I do not know anything I do not know, nor anyone else who doesn't know in which everyone is on an equal pane of knowledge or lack of, nobody knows anything for certain or more than the other. In life there are uncertainties that we live with, however instead of indulging myself in some kind of faith or belief in an after life, in some kind of comforting thought I've accepted the fact that for all anyone knows this could be it, or it couldn't...but as far as I know, whatever fulfillment I seek needs to be accomplished now, that's what I can realize for certain now, it may be for nothing in the end, but who knows...all I know now is I am aware, conscious, alive now...the people in my life are here now, this is the now, not some future hypothesis of what may or may not be without ever being able to prove it to everyone beyond any reasonable doubt.

 

I have a close friend of mine through childhood, being a bit older than me, we never really had that eye level communication...he's seven years my senior and was basically a neighbor kid that my mom was friends with his mother, he was always very introverted and shy, never talked about anything serious only joked around, his dad left him like many dad's do when he was young and never returned, at the time I didn't realize how much he was the way he was because of the absence of his father. We grew closer as we grew in age, myself now in my 30's him nearly 40, still never on that same emotional and communicative pane, getting to know him was a slow and gradual process but I may in fact be the closest, and even then relative to how close people may be after years of knowing someone, it's not much.

 

A few years (more than that now that i think about it) back his mother died, she was like family to me, she was always apart of his life and he never really appreciated her or respected her much, I think he took out his pain on her but she never left his side or stopped loving him, he was always dependent on her as well and he had never moved out of the house, as she got sick he picked up the slack and was paying the bills but he never was close to her emotionally/expressively, he just wasn't that kind of guy, he seemed to realize when she had cancer (among other serious health issues) and was very sick that she may die but he did not know how to react to it in the moment.

 

At her funeral he stepped up and said "I will always regret not telling my mother how much I loved her", for him to go up and say that to a crowd of friends and family was about the biggest thing I could ever imagine him doing, it was completely out of character, he just wasn't the type to express anything and my thought after the heartbreak of acknowledging his loss, was how much he may resent himself for the rest of his life for not being able to have that conversation with her. I stayed with him standing there for hours, watching them shovel the last piece of dirt upon her grave, I don't think he knew how to walk away from her, he never lived without her.

 

We didn't speak much about it afterwards, I said something to the effect of "It sucks not have your mom around anymore" and he replied "I know", he keeps a picture of her above his entertainment set, she's bald-headed with glasses looking sickly but smiling, no longer with her trademark locks of curly grey hair resting on top of her head, it saddens me every time to see her like that. But it's a conversation we never really had, although at this point I've been one his very close and few friends for many many years now, we've never really talked about it. I've asked him one other time if he's ever felt her presence around, he said no. He's not religious, he's not the type to believe in something more than that and that thought makes me sad because it makes me wonder what I will think when the time comes, I definitely don't want to lose someone forever.

 

Therefore my greatest fear is not dying myself, I think that'st the easy part honestly. It's having the people die around me that I love and care about, It's the thought of my grandparents dying who are much older now but have helped raise me during my parents divorce and my grandfather is like a second father to me even though the first thing he told me at 14 or 15 years old after I walked into his house was "Don't cry about it, your parents don't want you anymore so now you're my responsibility and you're going to have to become a man now and learn to take care of yourself and earn your stay here"..the guy was an @sshole and never expressed a shred of compassion for me, was just always hard on me and never let up, but I'm not a helpless teenager anymore and our relationship is different and I at a point told him what I thought about him.

 

I've learned a lot from the people in my life, I've learned to see beyond the lines and recognize the issues and the pain within people, I was very quiet and observant as a kid, I could never be fooled for long and eventually I'd see what was the truth for myself. I know my grandfather is in pain, I know his issues and toughness wasn't about being mean to me but trying to make me strong because he knew what it was like to be abandoned, I know my friend wasn't quiet because he was cold or mean he just never had the courage to face his fears, he never knew how, he always communicated in ways he was comfortable with but if you could interpret it you could understand what he was saying, so I don't really need him to tell me because I already know how he feels and it's up to him to share that.

 

I see people around me, family, friends, strangers all scared to face the truth and the darkness in their past, maybe never having conversations with people they should while they are here. I see people watch others die with words unsaid and conversations that needed to happen but never did, never having the courage to take that one giant, small step, not ever expressing to that person how they really feel. And imagine if it's the only chance you'll get, the only closure you'll receive instead of wishing for a next life to fix it all or whisk it away.

 

For myself, this is reality and the now...I push myself to make sure I have no regrets because this is the only existence I can be sure of, and if I do somehow, some way exist beyond this, maybe this wisdom and experience will in some way help me achieve something greater, but that's an afterthought...for now it's facing your fears in this life, and I worry a lot more about the fact of what I could do now, than some salvation or opportunity in the after life, I honestly feel that's a coping mechanism like many other things to not having the face the real issues in your life now, because if you can accomplish that, why couldn't you die in peace knowing you did everything you could for the now, righted your wrongs, and bonded the relationships to your best ability while you had the chance? What do you really fear about death?

 

Song - Heart of Gold

Edited April 13, 2014 by Ninjainpajamas

[Shaun-Dro]

I'm afraid of the physical pain and suffering that comes along with dying.

 

 

I don't think the process is as painful as we're led to believe. Of course there is a great deal of pain, but more like a strangeness that one feels as we all transition from one form to another.

 

 

It's something like the process of what happens before being born. I'm sure it's very similar.

 

 

We're returning to dust, from which we originally derived.

 

 

Death is a process. Science has already established that. We all just have to wait our turns. And keep in mind that sleeping is the closest relative to death: the cousin.

Edited April 13, 2014 by Shaun-Dro
error

[Fugu]

I'm not going to tell you that I'm not afraid of death - I want to live. I want to see more and do more - feel like I've only now just begun to understand some of the more basic things about our existence.

 

It's not whether or not I'm afraid of death; it's about whether we accept it when our time to die has come. I think I can accept it. I don't think I'd fight it too hard if I knew that my chances of survival were slim, though that would depend on cirumstances.

[STM206]

Somewhat, I think everyone questions it at some point or another.

 

The thing that gives me hope is reading stories on Near Death Experiences. The detailed descriptions of what people see after they die, really opened my eyes to the idea of life after death.

 

I personally don't think it's arriving at the gates of heaven and being condemned to hell (because if that were the case, I don't think anyone would make it in) but I do believe our spirits carry on, on one form or another.