Do you think about your own death?

Question

If yes, are you afraid?

Seventy or eighty years on this planet and then.. voila... the light is switched off and it's all over forever.

How do you cope with the sadness of death at the end of life?

Answer 1

The older you get, the more you have lost in the way of friends, family, and all that is familiar. So an older person is probably more resigned to dying, and doesn't have so much to lose. When I think of all my relatives and friends (some schoolfriends my age) that have died, I wonder sometimes whether it is worth going on living. I am not afraid of being dead, but am apprehensive of the act of dying, and can only hope it won't be painful.
I live in an area previously lived in by my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. There is little concrete evidence of their lives. Their contribution to the enviroment is now so anonymous. People live, breathe, feel, and love. Death swipes it all away, and leaves nothing in its place.

Answer 2

I have often thought about my own death. Because I have been physically close to dying. On more than one occasion I have gone to bed and wondered if I would ever wake up; I was so ill I truly believed I would die...

I did often say I didn't care if I died... but when it because a near reality I was terrified and scared. I want to have had a good decent life BEFORE I die. If I died now I would feel I missed out on the whole point of living in the first place.

Natural death, when ancient and old, when you reach the end of your life isn't sad as such. Not if you've had the sort of life you wanted to have. A lot of elderly people will say they are ready to die because they have had their life. They tend not to have any regrets and have had happy fulfilled lives.

Answer 3

Often but not afraid.
There have been several incidents in my life when I expected to die and once you accept that fact and know it is inevitable you have a feeling of calm and peace.
There is nothing religious in this as I am a devout atheist and would hate to have eternal life in heaven.
If you have had a full life and left the planet a little better off for future generation then there should be no sadness

Answer 4

When I was younger I used to, but now-a-days I think about life. Life is now, acting.
Past is dead, therefore of no interest for me except learning on experience.
Future is exciting, for you´ll never know what comes next.
Yes, out there in the future there is the death somewhere. But you are alive for one and only thing, live and act now.
No sadness, excitement. Sad will be those you leave behind.

Answer 5

Well there are many things you can do to overcom this fear.

For example... if youre a buddhist you believe in reincarnation. If youre a christian... you would believe in life after death in a heaven or hell.

Whatever the reality is... atleast you die knowing what YOU WANT to be reality. It might be harder to accept for an atheist because they believe that life stops for eternity in the graveyard.

Believe in what you want. Besides... no body has really been proven 100% correct on exactly what happens after death.

It is better to die believing in something in the after life and get proven wrong... than NOT believe in life after death and get proven wrong.

Answer 6

I think about death, but i am not scared of it, the way i see it is it comes to all and you can't run from it. And i hope i will see all the people i love who have died before me. Most people who die in there seventh and eighty are luckily as alot of people don't live to see that age, my son didn't nor my grandparents.

Answer 7

Although I do think about it occasionally, I don't let myself be frightened by the idea. After all, who wants to spend those 70 or 80 years worrying that they might not wake up in the morning.

I'm lucky enough to have only ever been to one funeral in my life so far, and this poem was read that somewhat changed my idea of death (although I suppose it depends on your beliefs):

The Ship by Victor Hugo

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the evening breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at length she is only a speck of white cloud just where the sea and the sky meet and mingle with one another. Then someone at my side exclaims, "There, she is gone!" Gone where? Gone from my sight, that's all. She is just as long in hull and mast and spar as she was when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of her destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, 'She's gone', there are other eyes watching for her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, 'There she comes!', and that is dying.

Answer 8

"the light is switched off and it's all over forever"

Says who?
I'm not a religious person at all but I have come to believe that our consciousness doesn't stop when we die. I've communicated with enough spirits to not think that. (& if I'm wrong, then so be it.)

Unless I die young, I don't think I would feel sad at the end of my life - I'd feel sad for the sadness I'd leave people behind with, but I'd be kind of intruiged to find out what happens next....and if nothing happens then I wont know about it or be sad/worried about it cos I'd be dead!

Answer 9

I do think about it occasionally....
And no, I'm not afraid.
Every moment that I'm alive, I am in fact dying.... and eventually there won't be enough left of me to justify my still "being".

Honestly, there just isn't all that much to think about. It is a very simple process. I think about it occasionally, but generally my thoughts are on the final method of bodily termination .... rather than the process of death itself. I'm not overly attached to my life or consciousness.

Answer 10

Death is a reoccuring thought. It's natural for humans to ponder their own death and the deaths of others. However, there is no sadness in death. Rather, there is sadness in finding someone who finds death sad.