I think since having become divorced from religion (at least with Christianity, I still find Dharmic spirituality interesting, but I still don’t believe in the supernatural), the idea of death has become a bit more difficult for me.
I tell myself that I am okay with dying, since it’s inevitable, and out of my control, but I think deep down, when I really think about the end of my existence, there is some deep terror there, perhaps related to the fear of the unknown. I can think of all kinds of fantastic quotes about death and finding peace with it, but when I think about what it will feel like to die, it instills great terror within me.
It’s not even a fear of the pain or anything. Just a fear of what may or may not be next. I think part of it too is some sort of fear of missing out. A fear of not getting to see the great things that are to come in this world. A fear of not having the time to learn the innumerable interesting things that there are to learn. So much to learn, and so little time. I think it also has to do with the thought of being forever separated from my loved ones. From my partner. From the person who I share my life with and have created my life with. Imagining being separated from her for an eternity, it brings me to tears.
Interestingly, this is a fear I’ve always had, ever since I was a child. I remember being 4 or 5 years old and asking my dad what happens after death, what death feels like, where my friends will go after death, and remember him becoming almost frustrated with my questioning, because these are obviously answers he doesn’t have and are honestly fairly strange thoughts for a child so young to be pondering.
For some reason, death has always been something on my mind since I was a child, and a very emotional thought at that. I think my brief stint of being religious from early childhood into mid-teen years was an emotional ‘band-aid’ of sorts, but since I’ve come to the conclusion that I truly don’t know what death will feel like or what will happen after death, these thoughts have again started racing through my head, giving me moderate emotional discomfort.
Have any of yourselves come to term with death? How have you managed to find peace with it besides “just don’t think about it”?
I’m going to answer more generally first: I’m not sure it would really be healthy to. That you are attached to others and cherish your time with them seems healthy to me. If this fear is paralyzing you in some way, I could see reason to be concerned and perhaps urge you to seek out a professional to talk to if at all possible. But if it’s just that it occasionally bothers you, that seems pretty human to me.
More specifically: As you do mention some preoccupation with it that you view as abnormal and seem to want to know more about it, I would ask you to consider… is it that you feel you need to understand death so you can cope with it? Is it a knowledge gap? A curiosity thing? If you are someone who wants to be as informed as you possibly can so you can face something, then you may have to either accept it’s the one thing about life you will never really know until it happens, or it may help to explore fantasy stories and different religious takes on it to feed your desire to understand it better (if that does apply). Though you can’t know, you could get a clearer picture of how human beings tend to view death and what they do about it, dissecting it on a cultural and materialist level, so you can sort of “zoom out” a little.
Another element to consider is, would you consider these thoughts intrusive and obsessive? Because if they are, it may help to practice welcoming them in, rather than trying to push them away (if that is something you think you are doing). Similar to anxiety spirals and being anxious about being anxious, becoming upset about the nature of an intrusive thought can make it worse. (Disclaimer here: I’m not a professional, just going off of what I know from personal research.)