Mortality ..... you ever worry about it

[St Francis Xavier]

I look on death as the worse kind of peer pressure-- just because everyone else does it doesn't mean you have to...

[Australis]

Used to be worried about dying. Watching my Mum go actually made it easier, I think i can do it now. It's not nice... but it's not scary

My only real concern is getting some of my stories out in a complete form before I cark it.

And after HH's delve into metaphysics and physics... look up retrocausality, THAT will mess with your mind.

[kahless]

I tend to think about death and what is after more now than I used to. To quote Jean Luc Picard with 18months until I hit the big 50 I've come to realise there are probably less days in front of me than behind. Am I scared of dying, yes, am I scared of what comes after, yes.

I don't believe in god or the afterlife and know that once death takes me that's it, just black nothingness.

Another poster once said in another thread that death is the same as what it was like before you were born. But the difference is before you were born you had no awareness of your time alive. When you die you will have had X amount of years alive and know that's all for nothing because once your gone you won't know anything else.

[trollface]

I'm not concerned about my own death. Well, I don't want my death to be protracted or painful, but I don't see much point worrying about it beyond trying to be relatively healthy and therefore staving off a few of the nastier possibilities. But being dead? Nope, I don't worry about that at all, beyond the vague sense of knowing that I'm never going to watch every episode of Doctor Who because they'll still be producing them long after I'm gone.

Other people's mortality, though, does play on my mind more and more these days. I've lost my last remaining grandparent within the last year (although at 96 he did pretty well, and it's always an encouraging sign for your own mortality if you have a close relative who made it to that kind of age), and I'm going to be spending the rest of the day travelling to see my mum for my step-dad's funeral tomorrow after having been back a few days after going round and presenting death certificates and talking to coroners and things like that. Couple that with the growing realisation that my parents are now in their 60s and therefore probably not going to be around forever, especially as my mum isn't a particularly well lady, and there's this vague, growing sense within me that I should make the most of them while I can because they won't always be there.

But, no, on the whole it's not something that really occupies my time. There's nothing I can do about any of it, so it makes more sense to me to concentrate on the bit that happens before the dying.

[Brigantian]

To set the scene, I do not consider myself a christian. However, I was sort-of raised as one and often find mytself framing my ideas around such a system. Anyway, I do not believe in heaven & hell, but do believe there is something beyond this plane of existance. My reason for believing, well part of it anyway, is a couple of experiences I have had with spritualism.

The most amazing one was a couple of years after my mother passed. She came from a family that had practicing mediums in it, but was herself a bit freaked out by the whole scene and was never really involved herself. So, I started having some really lucid dreams that featured her and occasionaly my father. In the dreams they did not speak and they generally freaked me out. So I went to a spirtualist church. I did not know anybody there and didn't really talk much with those present. On my second visit I got a contact. The medium described my mother very accurately, whilst I hid behind a large woman in front of me. Some people said the contact was for them, but when questioned by the medium they had to admit they were wrong. Eventually I put my hand up and said it might be for me. He then threw so many things at me I was left barely able to breath. He was on the button about so many personal details I was absolutely blown away. All I could do was nod my head as I couldn't speak. The funny thing is that there was no great life altering measage for me. The only message was to finish unpacking the boxes stacked up in my spare room from when I had moved house. I was also disappointed that I was not given her spritualist name. For those that don't know, those brought up as spiritualists genearally have a spiritualist name that they can, in theory, use to confirm it's them when they communicate from the other side.

Now I am quite a sceptical sort and would accept that my mothers spirit was not present and that the medium was either reading my mind or accessing the akashic record. Whatever explanation I go with, tells me there is something more to this life than just what we can see. I find this satisfying if not comforting. It also fits in with my general philosophy / spiritual beliefs ( my own not some cultish organisations). To get back to the original question. Do I worry about my own mortality? Nope. When your times up that's it. Time to move on. Like Kahless, I am about 15 months from the big 50. My bike keeps me young and is a constant reminder of my own mortality. Probably cos' I regress into a teenager everytime I throw my leg over it and ride it as such. At least until I start to get a bit of cramp at the top of my legs, then I remember my actual age.

[Pie Man 70]

I tend to consider death like 7:30am on a monday, there's no way I can stop it coming and I'll just do my best to be as comfortable as possible when it happens, either way I'd rather be in bed.

On one side I have pretty good signs, My dad's side both grandparents lived to their 90s and died of pretty much old age. Mums side, not so good, cancer, heart problems and some diabetes.

Of course my job has inherant dangers to it, but I have set up enough that wife and kids will be taken care of financially should the worst happen, in fact my wife has pointed out I'm worth more financially dead than alive at the moment.

Only real fear of death is the kids growing up without me (6 months and 3 years) and a slite grumble of all the things I coudl ahve done with the time left, but its not scaring me. I do believe that when you die, that's it, but i have come to terms with my relaitive insignificance in the universe so it's not really bothering me that soon all I am will be gone.

[ptahotep]

Strangely, as I get older I find myself not worrying about dying per se. Rather, I am concerned about posterity. I worry that I will die without leaving something behind for which I will be remembered. I want to make a discovery, write a book or whatever, so that I can leave my mark on history.

[Big Orange]

Are pink unicorns worrying?

[Australis]

Weeeellllll, this is going to sound a bit odd, but...

After my Mum died I wasn't coping very well, and started seeing a counsellor. We did d few different things, and one was hypnotherapy. Along the way, I was sked to imagine a house, and what was in it. There was a library, I felt, and it was filled with gold books, and it cvame to me that each book was a record of a life, a lif eI'd lived before. I only went into a couple of them, they were a bit depressing to be honest, but there was that sense of not everything dies, and that people you know now you have met before.

Now, I'm VERY skeptical of this stuff... but you had to see the images unfolding in my head, the thoughts the smells, the other people. I couldn't control any of it, it just happened, much as real life does. People didn't behave as you'd want them, they just did stuff as they saw fit. It was... comforting and unsettling at the same time. Talking about it with the counselllor, she said, much as I thought, that it might be real or it might not, just the mind conjuring stuff,for a purpose in how to see and cope with the real world. She gave me some follow up reading from a guy called Brian K Weiss. He's been investigating this for a long time with his patients, and he wonders about it too.

Oh, I know you'll think I'm a bit off my trolley with this, but all I know the experiences seem incredbly real.and I now wonder if there is something... later. Certainly food for thought.

[Happy-Hangman]

Originally Posted by ptahotep

Strangely, as I get older I find myself not worrying about dying per se. Rather, I am concerned about posterity. I worry that I will die without leaving something behind for which I will be remembered. I want to make a discovery, write a book or whatever, so that I can leave my mark on history.

I used to be of that opinion. I've written a couple of books, I've entertained a few thousand people and to be honest I don't think I'll be remembered. People who, for good or ill, change the way people think or live, they are the ones who will endure in memory.

I'd much rather be happy and be loved - though both are still very much Works In Progress. I don't want fame or fortune, so if I have regrets when the Big Day comes, they'll be about the little contentments so many undervalue.

I spend a lot of times in graveyards. Our ancestors, for all their funny little ways, had a much more relaxed and practical attitude to death - probably because it's imminence was so much more of an issue for most of them. Many older stones don't carry names or dates, but images showing what they did in life - a blacksmith's anvil, or a tailor's shears - so that what they were in their tiny communities was stressed much more than whjo they were. Skulls, crossed-bones, hourglasses and the like are common, along with latin phrases such as In Memento Mori - 'Remember, you too will die' - and to a modern eye this looks terribly morbid. It REALLY isn't. It's trumpeting that we should be making the most of what we have, here and now.

My favourite stone in my local kirkyard, the Holy Rude in Stirling is this one:



The stone is much older than the year marked - it having been re-sited and placed here in 1823 in memory of the only known victim of graverobbers in the Burgh - but that's by-the by. The image at the bottom is what I like. Death, wrapped in a funeral shroud, forces a richly attired woman into the grave, using a sexton's staff and spade. The message is clear enough: however high you may get on Fortune's Wheel, when your number is up, your number is up - so make the most of it. After all, Death is the great democrat who makes equals of us all.