Ever since I was a child I was afraid of getting older and dying. It has been in the back of my mind for most of my life.
I had phases were this fear was not really around and then phases where it is the only thing I can think of. Ever since Corona it has gotten worse and worse. It just struck me one day while playing video games with my friends. Suddenly I was like “I WILL die one day. I will not be anymore … forever. I won’t even know that I am not anymore.” and I broke down pretty much immediately.
What followed was a phase of everlasting fear and anxiety. It was so bad that I just couldn’t fall asleep unless I watched comedy until was physically not able to stay awake. Back then I thought it was a result of the isolation of Corona. Since then I moved back in with my mother (due to different reasons). Everything was fine for a while but now it is back.
I should be happy. I handed in my bachelor’s thesis a while back, will soon move out again and have gotten a job in my dream career. I finished my therapy and while I am still not completely over my social anxiety but it is getting better and better. And yet the fear was never as bad. Last night I cowered into a ball under my desk and started crying.
It has gotten to a point were I thought about killing myself to end it. It is the same result either way. I won’t remember anything anyway. Even the pain and grief friends and family would feel is only temporary. They too will be gone with everything that made them up one day.
I have no intentions of going through with it but it frightens me that I even think like this.
I don’t know were this is coming from. Maybe from the feeling that I am wasting my life, that I am a failure and too far behind peers, that I am too old to have so little but I also know that it’s not like I could have done a lot better. Due to circumstances outside of my own control I am were I am right now but I am doing my best to get better. It’s just that it takes a lot of time and I fear that it takes too much time. I also lost a good friend recently so this probably plays into it as well.
Is there anyway of changing my way of thinking about death? I know I can’t change the fact that I will die but how can I accept it without falling into existential nihilism like I currently am?
Edit: I also already called my therapist but since it’s the weekend they won’t answer before Monday.
negl homie I ache for the end of mine. I don’t see beauty, or majesty, or any breathtaking superlative in life anymore. I despise the country I was born into, and the majority of its people. You couldn’t pay me to consider educating these genocidal settler peckerwoods anymore. No educating. No camaraderie. Not even a buck for cab fare.
I just want it all to stop, if not for these murderous ghouls who don’t deserve the blood, sweat, and spittle, then at least for me so I no longer have to see what further crackery the dogs’ll perpetuate. I stopped fearing death when it first started occurring to me that these settlers will visit death on my community at a whim. Now I wish for it. The only dream I have anymore that doesn’t involve me dying with a smile on my face is one where I’m running some bookstore in another country, far from this place, with a sign in the local language on top, and english on bottom, settled in the corner of the window right next to the door, in big block capitals-- “NO FUCKING AMERICANS”.
I’ve felt exactly how you feel several times in my life, and I’ll probably feel again, too hehe.
To be conscious is both a gift and a curse. You are conscious of your death whereas most animals simply live and die, though they can also be afraid of death even if they aren’t aware of it. To be aware of it means you are afraid even though death is not around the corner.
Death is a part of life, it’s an experience like any other. One thing that helped me be more at peace with my death is psychedelics, because they are an experience different from regular life, which is an insight to the experience of death. It’s been shown that natural death releases DMT in our brain, and numerous people who’ve had an almost death experience reported a trip before they “returned.”
Another thing you can try to diminish your anxieties is meditation. If you practice meditation enough, you’ll be able to enter a conscious state where you shut off normal activity and you experience self-nothingness. When you blend in with the environment in meditation practice, you learn to not be afraid of nothingness. Death suddenly doesn’t sound that bad, and you lose attachment to this life, so that you’re no longer afraid to lose it.
In short, we shouldn’t feel anxious about death. We will die eventually, why worry? Everything will come in its time. Even if we suffer the most violent and painful death possible, it’ll be over eventually, so what’s the worry? Consciousness is an experience, death will be another. Enjoy both when the time comes!
This answer is great. It pretty much summarizes what I was trying to say in the old post (that I linked), but better.
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive. Never surrender.” -2pac
There was a similar post a while back with some good answers. I’ll try to find it.
Edit: found it, hope that helps
I was immediately reminded of this too. :P
You have to prepare for death, a lot of people’s fear of death stems from unpreparedness. Sort out a will, decide what will happen after you die, snuff out as many regrets as you can. Tie up your loose ends. These things helped me mitigate the fear a bit.
I read this a while back, I think it addresses your vibes. I don’t know who the guy is otherwise but there’s some good takes in there.
Comrade, I don’t know anything about psychology, psychiatry, or neurology, but I do know it would be a real shame if you were outlived by Henry Fucking Kissinger
See that’s what I was looking for.
Why bother with living if we all end up in the neverending void of death?
Out of spite for Kissinger.
Hey comrade! I think I somewhat understand the way you are feeling. In the past years I have been dealing with some panic attacks and anxiety over it. The best approach is going to therapy, but in my case what really helps is trying to not think about it, focusing on the good things around you. Even though that normally is bad advice, in this case I think is different since death is inevitable, it will come one way or another, its out our control. This creates a void that chases us, a darkness that is ever present, I know this feeling is horrifying, but there is no changing it, so thinking a lot about it only feeds the void making it bigger and stronger.
I hope you can find solace eventually and learn to accept this, since I believe there is no cure for the darkness, but learning to live with it makes it easier to carry on. Maybe I’m full of shit and you do find a solution. Who knows.
In any case, remember that you are good for the world, and we never know what the future holds. Who knows if maybe even a revolution. Try to stay as long as possible, you want every chance of not missing that out.
Stay strong and stay safe comrade, best of luck.
Personally, what motivates me is knowing that as long as I’m alive, the proletarian vanguard has +1 comrade, and I don’t want to go without making a difference. Use the time you have to put your back into the things you think are worth fighting for. Don’t be complacent; don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s meaningless, for naught, or that your decisions amount to nothing. There are people who seriously would love to know you, and people who need your help. Every second you spend thinking about death is a waste of your time, so don’t get caught up in it. It’s an inevitability not worth thinking about. And try to find some comfort in the fact that literally every other organism that has ever lived crossed that same threshold.
Tl;dr - focus on the present moment and don’t let it go to waste. When you’re really in despair, try to draw attention to the pure phenomonology of being, the feeling of breathing, the reflection of light off the wet pavement; bring yourself back to the world, and then remember… there’s much yet to do.
DMs are always open. :stalin-heart:
I agree overall, but death is still worth contemplating. Just don’t let it eat you up.
I’m already dead inside. Not much would change when I die except for my consciousness being gone.
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I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I don’t care I’m hungry
Death is an abomination. My only hope is that humanity might someday conquer death, and I want to contribute to that even if I don’t make it.
If I can help make a world where no one ever has to say goodbye again, I think I could die for it.
I disagree with this type of answer. I was trying to come up with a way to respond last time the topic came up and now I think I have. Death is a part of life. All things created must be destroyed. Negation of the negation, dialectics.
Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us.
-Friedrich Engels, The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man
All things will be destroyed by entropy, but we don’t have to die before the stars do.
Sickness is a part of life. Starvation is a part of life. We prevent those when we can and seek to abolish them. Death is no different.
Further, death is the negation of life. The negation of the negation would be something else. Recurrence, possibly? The next Big Bang that happens after our universe has long dissipated into extremely vacuous cold gas?
I don’t see immortality as either a worthy venture, nor something that is likely possible. Mortality gives life meaning. I’m sure if we were somehow immortal there would be negative unforeseen consequences. It is not desirable to conquer nature, but to live in harmony with it. That’s why I quoted Engels. Sickness will always be a part of life, but it has been and will be limited.
The fact that so many people find their lives meaningless shows that mortality has given them no meaning. In fact, many people find life meaningless because we die. Furthermore, mortality creates suffering, which itself can destroy the meaning people find in life.
I believe struggle gives life meaning. Mortality is just an unfortunate genetic deformity that we haven’t cured yet, and one we must struggle against. Once that struggle is done, we will tackle the next and the next forever. Eternal recurrence.
Humanity finds its own meanings of life. Mortality both makes things seem meaningless and gives meaning, another contradiction. Struggle is certainly a way of finding meaning. I think the drab proletarian life and the crushing force of capitalist realism is largely at fault for the meaningless in this society.
Now I’m wondering whether this debate is worth having at all. I guess it is as some find false hope in immortality instead of coming to terms with their own death. Regardless, immortality is certainly unfeasible within the foreseeable future, so we might as well come to terms with death. I don’t know if I’ll convince you, but I’ve said what I have to say.
Edit: I forgot to add Albert Camus’ famous analogy of Sisyphus being like the proletarian who daily works at something of which it’s products are not their own. Also, like the human who’s work on earth will never be complete at death. We are capable of finding purpose in such an absurd scenario. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
I have to say, if Sisyphus is happy that it proves my point. He is, after all, immortal. 🙃
Not really, if I were he doing nothing but an un-completable task I’d wish I could end it all. The point is that we assume he is suffering, but as our condition is like his we should imagine him happy.
fuck me sounds like you’ve never experienced proper depression…
I don’t want to live any second longer than I have to and even that’s pushing it to be honest.Please don’t make me live even longer.
I am trans and didn’t get treatment until 29 a few years ago; I was suicidal for most of my life.
I still believe death is an abomination. I’m so fucking glad I lived through that.
And someday depression will be defeated too, just like death.
I doubt society will be rid of depression. As Breht said on Revleft a while back, it is impossible to seek a world without contradiction. We seek to end unnecessary material suffering through socialism and ending the class contradiction, but new contradictions will arise and life will probably be more rich and complex. When economic and physical barriers are no longer there to produce inequality many may feel bad in a different way because their own faults are truly the cause of their problems.
Depression is not caused by contradiction. Depression is not simple adversity. It’s a sickness that makes people stop wanting to live.
People will still feel bad when we cure depression, but they won’t want to lay down and never get up again. It’s very different.
As long as we are mortals we will feel nihilistic at times. I think society will be able to greatly reduce alienation with socialism, but that doesn’t mean people won’t be in awe of existential mystery and apparent darkness. Capitalism crushes people more than is natural, but there is also inherent feeling of not being enough and wanting more in humans.
Depression isn’t just feeling nihilistic at times. It’s literally the desire for nothing. Nihilists can at least be hedonists and pleasure seekers, but depression robs even that from us. We become almost unfeeling, except for a low droning of despair that’s never quite enough to make you do anything but always enough to drown out everything else you might feel.
When depressed, you don’t want more. You want nothing.
Depression is a sickness. It’s not being sad. It’s not feeling bad. It’s another abomination that must be destroyed.
I don’t disagree, I just don’t know whether it’s possible.
What has that got to do with seeking a world without contradiction? We eradicated smallpox just fine without ending up in dialectical limbo, why can’t we do it with depression?
I’m saying there will be new and different reasons to feel bad even under socialism.
No offence but I wish Lemmy had a “hide post” feature like r*ddit
Don’t worry I understand.
Death doesn’t much concern me, I sometimes ponder it but never really have crippling anxiety over. Unfortunately that’s been replaced by another anxiety. The fear that no matter what the proletariat do, the ruling class will simply win next time again. I fear that all the great progress we’ve made in these last years will be tarnished in a cruel replication of the 1980s collapse of the left-wing movements. But I know this will not happen, we will learn, we will evolve, and we will prepare, and we will finally be liberated.
If I die for a good and just cause such as building up the revolution to free the misery of others, then I’ll be content with it. But it if was for naught, well I would continue to live to spite the ruling parasites, but I would see humanity refusing to evolve past its current stage of development, this is what I greatly fear.
As if right now I’m playing through disco Elysium, and one of the paths is Harry becoming a communist. He abandons alcohol, and takes up organizing, but in truth he simply replaced an addiction for substances, for an addiction to liberation. That’s how I operate within this capitalist inhumane system, replace your rage, anxiety and aspirations for the liberation of this evil system.
You are a comrade, You see the true injustices of this system, it isolates and oppresses those who do not fall under its drunk inducing propaganda. And to lose someone like you, we will all lose the potential successes of your talent in our collective liberation, contact your local socialist organisation, be it the CPUSA or similar, and begin organising, and in the future, look back and be proud of the millions you helped in achieving our struggle.
This is only coming from me, as I found that my passion belonged to the communist movement. If this does not work do not worry! It just means you’ve yet to find your passion. You’re never too old to find talent, or meaning, never, we humans change throughout our lives. We will all fix our problems collectively.
