The feeling of mortality. How is it for you?

[Nerys Ghemor]

I agree with Nerys Ghemor.

I always believed I would be dead by age 35. Based upon this I lived my adult life to the fullest and accomplished many things... even reckless things. Once I survived past age 35, I started to think about whether I lived a life to be proud of. Once I started to work on that, I stopped thinking of my own mortality and started living to help others.

I didn't die in body--that I know of, but I don't rule out that I could've stopped breathing in my sleep (don't think I want to know the answer to that one)--but I had a very powerful vision where I did die and was taken all the way to the edge of Heaven before I was abruptly thrown back into waking world and woke up. I have never been so completely and totally disoriented in my life as I was in that instant when I woke up. It took me a long time to come to terms with what had happened, and with being alive again, but the lessons I cited above were ultimately the ones I took away from the experience.

 

[thestrangequark]

I think that now, because of some very powerful experiences I've had, it isn't my death that scares me, because I feel very strong in my belief that my existence will not end then. It's more the physical experience of dying that scares me. Basic fear of pain. No one wants suffering...I certainly don't.

I feel the opposite. I am not afraid of death because I know that there's nothing after. I'll be dead, I won't feel or care about anything, and that's fine by me. Sometimes it's desirable.

Sometimes, though, I feel like I want to live forever, not out of fear of death but out of curiosity about life. I wish I could hang around hundreds or thousands of years to see what's going to happen. It's like I've been given the greatest book every written, and been allowed to read only a brief chapter in the middle.

 

[Jax]

I pity death for it shall have to spend eternity with me and I will make it weep like a little girl

 

[TerokNor]

Though I do not speak of death alone. I mean more the history of things......making your mind and heart flow back and forward on the stream of time (though not truly, as its still only your own present mind). And the amount of all the thoughts that have been thought before, are thought now and will still be thought, all the feelings that have, are and will be felt.... that bring to the same time a smile to your lips and tears in your eyes. And the feeling of feeling connected to someone long gone, has if you in a way could feel him or her, even you have never known that person, but the words or melody etc. they left are so powerful that they do seem to transport them right in the present.

As for death, I feel a bit like NG and STQ. As NG believes in something after death, well I do not have true faith, but I do have hope that there is more. And as TSQ I not truly fear death itself, but fear to miss so many things in life and my biggest fear would be to die before my parents, because I know that would pain and destroy them and for that I would be so sorry.

TerokNor

 

[Sean Aaron]

I have an interest in palaeontology and evolutionary biology; looking at the world through geologic time comes with that. Too many people (probably more especially the very wealthy) concern themselves with their "legacy" and "being remembered," but the fact is that in the fullness of time our deeds and even our species will likely be little more than a footnote in history.

How many ancient Egyptians can you name? Just because we produce more written works doesn't mean that this information will last any longer than a few thousand years and all the works of this current civilisation are unlikely to be around in 10s or hundreds of millennia - let alone millions of years. Will our species have even a fraction of the time on earth that the scorpions or cockroaches have? It's impossible to imagine, but yet that is the measure of evolutionary success. We could burn out in a few centuries with no descendants, which would make us a mere a blip - an anomaly amongst the countless species that have walked this planet.

With that in mind, I can safely say that the long view for me has little meaning. My "legacy" is my daughter - I can die happy knowing she is safe.

The prospect of death is scary, but also exciting - the great unknown. After walking away from a motorcycle accident that could easily have been fatal, everything else is gravy. My maternal Grandfather died at 63 of a sudden heart attack. I'm 41; if I have only another 20 years, I think that would be okay.

 

[Lonemagpie]

after doing a somersault with a vw golf at 100kph and getting out of the wreckage basically unharmed, i've philosophized about morality enough to last me a lifetime.

i try to avoid thinking about such things since ever since. i think i used up a lifetime of luck in ten minutes.

similar here- died twice so far, and I have to say the coming back hurt a lot more than the going... (and considering that the going in one case involved being squished in the back seat of a rear-ended car that got turned from a station wagon into a hatchback in about two seconds...)

 

[lurok]

after doing a somersault with a vw golf at 100kph and getting out of the wreckage basically unharmed, i've philosophized about morality enough to last me a lifetime.

i try to avoid thinking about such things since ever since. i think i used up a lifetime of luck in ten minutes.

similar here- died twice so far, and I have to say the coming back hurt a lot more than the going... (and considering that the going in one case involved being squished in the back seat of a rear-ended car that got turned from a station wagon into a hatchback in about two seconds...)

Similar here...except no car-smash, and no white lights/tunnels, and the going was painless and nothing. I've been more bemused by the coming back rather than any pain or dislocation, but might be slightly different for me as I now know roughly when and how I will be shuffling off this mortal coil - and it's a lot sooner than I originally anticipated when younger. The only thing the impending loss of mortality has made me ponder is question of nothingness (which I think is most likely if bleak scenario) versus a selfish desire to have some element of this conscious self remain after death. But I guess I won't know until I get there Or will I?

 

[MANT!]

I always think of the following...


[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlBiLNN1NhQ[/yt]

I remind myself that the reason we are mortal is to get out of the way of those with fresh ideas...

 

[thestrangequark]

^Are we long lost twins, both referencing Monty Python songs as the answer to the meaning of life and death? Or was Eric Idle just that wise?

 

[CaptainStoner]

I am the walrus.

 

[MANT!]

^Are we long lost twins, both referencing Monty Python songs as the answer to the meaning of life and death? Or was Eric Idle just that wise?

Eric Idle is just that wise...

But we might be twins...or at least very distant relatives...

 

[iguana_tonante]

I am not afraid of death because I know that there's nothing after. I'll be dead, I won't feel or care about anything, and that's fine by me. Sometimes it's desirable.

Sometimes, though, I feel like I want to live forever, not out of fear of death but out of curiosity about life. I wish I could hang around hundreds or thousands of years to see what's going to happen. It's like I've been given the greatest book every written, and been allowed to read only a brief chapter in the middle.

I feel exactly the same. I am scared of illness, and pain, and old age, but I am not really scared of death: I won't be there to suffer any ill from it. I am, however, mighty pissed off at death. All the things I will never do, all the stuff I will never learn, all the people I will never meet. That piss me off big time.

I have an interest in palaeontology and evolutionary biology; looking at the world through geologic time comes with that. Too many people (probably more especially the very wealthy) concern themselves with their "legacy" and "being remembered," but the fact is that in the fullness of time our deeds and even our species will likely be little more than a footnote in history.

I'm a cosmologist. Contemplating the entire history of time makes you feel pretty negligible, I tell you.

But at the same time, I feel very deeply the uniqueness of myself and how unrepeatable my life is in the great tapestry of the space-time (I have a feeling this won't come as a surprise to people ). Even if the universe keep running forever, it will never be another me (Omega Point scenarios excluded). So the only "legacy" I feel the need to leave is my own life, lived exactly in the way it was (and it will be) lived.

My own very existence, a naked ape ape on a utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, orbiting a small unregarded yellow sun in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of one of the thousand billions galaxies in the universe, altered the state of the universe, irrevocably. Nothing can change it. My life will resonate in the fabric of the universe, forever.

The iguana wuz here. The universe will remember it. And will think of it as "the good times".

 

[Amaris]

I feel my mortality all of the time, and I think about it just as often. Sometimes, I get the feeling that the end of the line is a lot closer than what may appear. I've had that nagging feeling all my life.

 

[Goliath]

My own very existence, a naked ape ape on a utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, orbiting a small unregarded yellow sun in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of one of the thousand billions galaxies in the universe, altered the state of the universe, irrevocably. Nothing can change it. My life will resonate in the fabric of the universe, forever.

Your RL name isn't Marco Aurelio by any chance, is it?

I am composed of the formal and the material; and neither of them will perish into non-existence, as neither of them came into existence out of non-existence. Every part of me then will be reduced by change into some part of the universe, and that again will change into another part of the universe, and so on for ever. And by consequence of such a change I too exist, and those who begot me, and so on for ever in the other direction.

--Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Five

 

[PKTrekGirl]

Sometimes, though, I feel like I want to live forever, not out of fear of death but out of curiosity about life. I wish I could hang around hundreds or thousands of years to see what's going to happen. It's like I've been given the greatest book every written, and been allowed to read only a brief chapter in the middle.

This is how I feel. Only I feel this way all the time. I want to see what will happen 100, 200, 500, 1,000 years from now. Right now, we think we are the shitz, because we are so 'advanced', but in 200 years they will look back at us and think "How quaint those people were back then! They had no clue what was to come...and their world was so backward! How could they have possibly lived without all of our present day conveniences and knowledge?"

Although they might be cursing us for destroying their world - that is the more probable outcome, unfortunately.

But in any case, I just hate the idea that I only get to read one small chapter in the middle of the book. I want to read the whole story!

That is the thing I hate most about the idea of death.

 

[Sephiroth]

ah the old "great adventure" mindset, yeah, it'd be fun to go out and explore, but be grateful for what time you have and, as the song says

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth

 

[F. King Daniel]

I feel my mortality all of the time, and I think about it just as often. Sometimes, I get the feeling that the end of the line is a lot closer than what may appear. I've had that nagging feeling all my life.

The thing about that feeling is... it only has to be right once.

 

[Amaris]

I feel my mortality all of the time, and I think about it just as often. Sometimes, I get the feeling that the end of the line is a lot closer than what may appear. I've had that nagging feeling all my life.

The thing about that feeling is... it only has to be right once.

Exactly.