Fear of death

Cope the final dread

Fear of Death

Jan 13 2025

Ah, fear of death and existential dread — it is one of the most common tragedies one faces. For me personally, it has been a common occurrence. Not only the fear of not existing, but also all the insecurity that comes with it, from my jeopardized career to personal insecurity.

What most people spend their life doing, after a certain age and point, is planning for death. They have an image of the ideal way they want to die, or want to be part of a legacy — a thing, a karma they want to be remembered for.

In a way, for most, they plan their death as the pinnacle point, the final destiny, the ultimate equalizer. They try to perceive the moment in the most dream-like way they want it.

Some might want to be surrounded by loved ones, some might want to be part of a legacy. In brevity, no one wants their life to be meaningless, their blip of existence going to waste, without certain personal values they care about. This is all normal thinking and feeling — this is one of the motivations that drives people.

But oh my! Nature, like a cunning master, a personification of chaos, the ultimate demon, doesn't play by our mere human rules. It always has a way to blunder any of our ultimate plans — the same goes for all our grandiose plans of death.

Then we delude ourselves, drunk on the bliss of different systems — be it religion, rationality, spirituality, what have you. Nevertheless, it is a coping mechanism.

So what's here for me? For me, I thought: why not choose a healthy coping mechanism? One of them is what is now called "digging out of the grave."

I. The Cope

The thing is, death is not a singular event. The realization is that you don't die at the end of a certain lifespan — it's an occurring process. It is happening now! A real-time, natural degradation of biological systems (aging).

You don't have to actually die — you can die metaphorically, symbolically, psychologically. It rarely happens that the person you were when born is the same person you are now. Sometimes a person changes so drastically that the old persona is better called dead.

Now, collecting all these thoughts above — how do you actually cope with this daunting realization?

Here, in line with Nietzsche-inspired thought and deriving from his ideas on the positive affirmation of life, I thought: why not live every day as a challenge to your dying process?

Why not look death in the face and show it how alive you are today! Challenge it! Be more alive than you are dead that day. The purpose of life can be: how much am I alive today versus how much am I dead? Let the life force weigh more than death!

Dig out of your everyday coffin. Try to be more alive than you were yesterday.

Let's affirm life rather than complement it with its nihilistic tendency (death signifies natural nihilism — the default state the universe is in, without life).

If we take this style of thinking further, you can apply it to many other aspects of life. You feel insecure naturally — dig out of this natural tendency, challenge this biased thought (a naturally degraded evolutionary system, ill-suited for a modern setting), and thrive in that environment.

Easier said than done, but here I say again: I will let my actions speak better than words.