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OP, hard to believe someone is first recognizing their eventual demise at 55. I was 5 when starting to ask questions about death. At 7 I was really worried about what happens after my passing. By the time I was a late teenager I have come to terms with it. Then experienced my own spirituality followed by discovering humor in it all.
Now sometimes I look at the stars in the night sky and I think about the universe in cosmological sense and know I am really never going anywhere.
Looking back at it now mid-forties I wish I had some Ayahuaska handy when I turned 18. Now I just have to figure out a purpose of it all.
Death is non-existence, so there is nothing to fear. You will feel the same in death as you did prior to your birth: NOTHING.
And no, none of you are going anywhere after you die, no matter what you desire, no matter how you have lived, no matter what your daddy told you, and no matter which deity in the Amazon spirituality store has struck your fancy and caused you to click "add to cart".
So the real fear is not dying, but dying painfully and over an extended period of time. Terminal disease is the real thing to fear, because facing your end in this way gets really real. We all much prefer to be kept in the dark as to when our soul will go dark. Terminal disease shines a most unwelcome flashlight in the hole, and the terror of being forced to peer into its depth is what we really fear.
Mortality should "hit you" in your teenage years. 50 is too late, you are already a postscript. It needs to hit you young so that you exercise great care in deciding how to spend the only currency that matters at all: Time. And so you appreciate, really, actively, appreciate, each day you have spent.
That's what drives me crazy about, for a few examples, drug addicts, alcoholics, radical fundamentalists of any faith, and procrastinators. All of them are wasting the ONLY thing you have: Time. Limited and precious time.
Death is non-existence, so there is nothing to fear. You will feel the same in death as you did prior to your birth: NOTHING.
And no, none of you are going anywhere after you die, no matter what you desire, no matter how you have lived, no matter what your daddy told you, and no matter which deity in the Amazon spirituality store has struck your fancy and caused you to click "add to cart".
So the real fear is not dying, but dying painfully and over an extended period of time. Terminal disease is the real thing to fear, because facing your end in this way gets really real. We all much prefer to be kept in the dark as to when our soul will go dark. Terminal disease shines a most unwelcome flashlight in the hole, and the terror of being forced to peer into its depth is what we really fear.
Mortality should "hit you" in your teenage years. 50 is too late, you are already a postscript. It needs to hit you young so that you exercise great care in deciding how to spend the only currency that matters at all: Time. And so you appreciate, really, actively, appreciate, each day you have spent.
That's what drives me crazy about, for a few examples, drug addicts, alcoholics, radical fundamentalists of any faith, and procrastinators. All of them are wasting the ONLY thing you have: Time. Limited and precious time.
And you know all of this how? How do you possess such knowledge about life and death?
Open your eyes and your brain, you can join me. Reason is open to all of us, but we have to choose it.
Because my eyes and brain are open, I am open to the possibility that humans do not have all the answers pertaining to life and death. And anyone who professes to know all the answers is being closed minded. I'm a free thinker. Humans are arrogant. But I try not to be.
Because my eyes and brain are open, I am open to the possibility that humans do not have all the answers pertaining to life and death. And anyone who professes to know all the answers is being closed minded. I'm a free thinker. Humans are arrogant. But I try not to be.
And if you keep your eyes and brain open after deciding that is the right thing to do, which of course it is, then you will keep them open by NOT filling in the blanks with wishes and emotional fantasies borne of weakness and fear. The decision to live by Reason is choosing life without a safety net. But you can't abandon the race by building the safety net when you discover that you do not know everything. Holes in what we know represent opportunities for discovery and learning, and nothing more.
Is it more "arrogant" to resolve to learn about something where knowledge is missing, or to simply fantasize it and fill it in? Is it more arrogant to treat the unknown as an opportunity to find out? With the possibility of failure? Or is it more arrogant to make it up and demand that the fantasy be reality? Is it more arrogant to admit a deficiency of knowledge and point the intellect in the direction of correcting it? Or to postulate it and stamp your foot and demand that your invention be declared real SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU WANT IT THAT WAY!
Which is more arrogant, the implied humility of resolving to discover? Or the preposterous presumptuousness of declaring the veracity of what we want to be true because we fear the alternative?
Yes, my dear, open that brain. BUT KEEP IT OPEN FOR YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. You will not know everything, ever. But if you have any value at all, it will be because you decided to discover what you don't know, and not invent it.
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