Saturday, April 5, 2008

Fear of Death

Death is sleep. In sleep, you're not conscious. So, think of death as sleep. However, unlike the others, I don't see how this knowledge can make you feel any better or alleviate your fears about death. Because even if death is like sleep, death is an unending sleep and hence your fears of no longer existing remains because in death, as with sleep, you no longer exist. Personally, I am not afraid of death. I have made my peace with death.

Face it head-on. Think about it. Death is a constant. It is guaranteed. Death, like life, is not the result of choice. Therefore, learn to accept the inevitability of death. As per reincarnation, well, I'm agnostic and so therefore, in the absence of proof, I refuse to believe.

Reincarnation is a way of coping with the knowledge of certain death...of the finiteness of life, so we make ourselves believe that its not really finite, its not really over...we will come back again and again. Others believe that we go to another place after this and in order to encourage "good living", we are told of heaven and hell. Life and death are just two sides of the same coin. Life is simply waiting to die; death is the end of life. They are interconnected and you cannot have one without the other. Learn to accept it. Let it go. Don't love it too much because if you do, then you think you'll miss it and if you think you'll miss it, you don't want it to end and if that's the case, you'll be afraid of it. That fear itself can then affect your ability to live the life in the first instance.

You can at least take solace, as a human, in the knowledge that everybody dies.

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