Accepting Mortality

and 3 others

and 3 others

Banned
I'm 37 years of age, and for the last 6 or 7 years, I've been having a hard time with my own mortality. When I was younger I'd get a car/bike loan (for example) and be like, "yeah, I'll have that paid off in 6 years" Now thinking of that, I'm like "Fuck, I'll be 43 by then". Everything felt so far away, and now im feeling like my life is more then half over. Just curious if ya'll have went through this, anything that helped you, and what you felt like once you made it through?
 
i just don't want to die with my mental illness. i'm gonna have to train like a buddhist monk to accept that shit, and yes these things are always hard.
 
death is messy, you can live with dignity but you cannot die with it

stay strong and healthy while you can

i'm prolly gonna point black myself with an adamantium bullet if things gets irreparably bad down the road
 
Time to buy a C8 Corvette Stingray

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Die with honor. Die a warrior's death. Do not go out with a whimper.

I'm probably going out at like 80 mph on the water. There will be wreckage. And pieces floating everywhere. And flames.
 
Aside from the Corvette and the 20-something girlfriend attached, the best way to relieve stress about the future is to have your retirement sorted out. Are you making your max IRA contributions? You still have a nice 30 year stretch to get that sorted out and end up with a respectable nest egg at the end after compound interest.


At 7% interest:

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By the time you get there, hell, maybe you'll be able to visit a Mars colony with some of that cash.
 
Screw that.... My 40s were way more fun than my 30s, and 50s look to be even better.

My best advice if you are feeling anxious about aging is to hang out with someone who is retired or close to it.
 
trauma makes it easier, that's been my experience (bad injuries, crashed a few times on the stretcher and in the operating room)

i'm at the 'if i fall, don't bring me back' stage of my life but i'm also significantly healthier than everyone around me
 
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Anyway, I try to look at people who are really old, like Joe Biden and Clint Eastwood, who actually are very likely to die in the next 10 years. They are facing that situation right now. And there are countless of people who know they are taking their last breath right now. All of them have in one way or another more or less been able to get over it.

If for some reason I haven't gotten over it when that time comes for me, I hope I have been able to keep whatever faith I have in afterlife.
 
Regarding the end itself, it's time to decide to be either a believer or a nihilist, so you can have conviction in the afterlife or acceptance in lack of meaning. Sitting on the fence is liable to produce a lifetime of existential dread instead of making the most of the time you have.
 
I wonder if this kind of existential crisis happens more to people who live in cities and haven't lived a countrylife, or haven't hunted, or even fished.
I feel like the people who see more death in nature understand their mortality better and the realization doesn't come as big of a surprise to them.
 
Plant trees and move the earth watch life flourish as your days come to an end and then bury urself in that earth and become one. We take from the earth it's important to give back and turn barren lands into beautiful forests ! Karma is real !
 
EviLore said:
Regarding the end itself, it's time to decide to be either a believer or a nihilist, so you can have conviction in the afterlife or acceptance in lack of meaning. Sitting on the fence is liable to produce a lifetime of existential dread instead of making the most of the time you have.
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Internet doesn't make strong convictions too easy though. There's always some fucker who is trying to spin your convictions around. I know because I probably am one of those fuckers :D

I've realized though that I've started to really admire people who have CRAZY ideas and stick by them no matter how much people are trying to shake those ideas away. I would kinda love to be a hardcore young earth creationist with tons of backbone to trust his own convictions. There's something oddly admirable in that. Hell, I'd love to be a flat earther too, or one of those who believe know space is not real!

Ok, maybe for some internet also makes it very easy to have strong convictions too :D

Anyway, yeah I think you are right with having two sides you can fall on. It's either a believer or a nihilist. There's really no way around those two options. No middle ground. Any attempts to any middle ground requires some sort of false hope and thinking. Not fully accepting to be a believer requires you to be untrue with your ideals. And not fully accepting nihilism also requires you to be untrue with your ideals. In both cases you are not really going where that view of life and reality would logically lead you to.
But then again is that kind of full conviction even truly absolutely possible for anyone? What I know is that countless amount of people have thought about that exact thing for the past thousands or tens of thousands of years and died. There's either a meaning for this possibility to think of that, or there isn't. If there isn't, boy isn't it a miraculous thing!
 
You are dying every moment as it is, constantly coming in and out of consciousness.
Your ego tricks you into believing in a self which exists continuously for some finite time interval.
Let go of that illusion and all your existential anxieties will disappear.
You'll see death as a natural, integral part of life and completely embrace it.

At the end of the day, worrying about death is just like worrying that your favourite TV series is coming to an end.
 
SKM1 said:
You are dying every moment as it is, constantly coming in and out of consciousness.
Your ego tricks you into believing in a self which exists continuously for some finite time interval.
Let go of that illusion and all your existential anxieties will disappear.
You'll see death as a natural, integral part of life and completely embrace it.

At the end of the day, worrying about death is just like worrying that your favourite TV series is coming to an end.
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I haven't yet been convinced that this mindset is actually any more true than is the mindset of swingers who "saved their marriage" by swinging though.
 
Well you can always become a dustman.

"Passions carry weight. As long as one clings to emotion they will be continually reborn into this life, forever suffering, never knowing the purity of True Death. To achieve True Death you must kill your passions and strip yourself of the need for sensation. When you achieve this you achieve peace, past the Eternal Boundary lies the peace all souls seek." - Dhall
 
My girlfriend is also 37, it's her birthday this month and she said she is staying 37. Maybe you could do that!
 
It's hard to think about. My dad just turned 60 a week or so ago and when I asked him how it felt, he said it seems like just yesterday he was a kid riding his bike. Then I kinda hit me... life goes by fast. We just have to value the time that we have and make the most of it.
 
Airola said:
I haven't yet been convinced that this mindset is actually any more true than is the mindset of swingers who "saved their marriage" by swinging though.
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I don't see how the comparison applies.
In any case I'm not trying to sell some pseudo-spiritual crap.
What I do advise is to take a step back and really question these inherited fears, and realize that they are just absurd. Constructions of the mind. Attachments springing from nothing but tales we tell ourselves.
Do away with all those burdens and then perhaps chose your own burden, that of giving life its (your) meaning.
 
and 3 others said:
I'm 37 years of age, and for the last 6 or 7 years, I've been having a hard time with my own mortality. When I was younger I'd get a car/bike loan (for example) and be like, "yeah, I'll have that paid off in 6 years" Now thinking of that, I'm like "Fuck, I'll be 43 by then". Everything felt so far away, and now im feeling like my life is more then half over. Just curious if ya'll have went through this, anything that helped you, and what you felt like once you made it through?
Click to expand...
I am 42, severely chronically ill, and am looking at my life probably coming to an end within the next decade, perhaps a bit longer. I dealt with the concept of mortality way back at twenty at diagnosis when the doctor told me I had months to live. What I learned was that there's a massive difference in knowing of your own mortality in an abstract sense, and coming to actually realize it and knowing that you will die. It was a realization I though I understood until it was right in front of my face, placed into a context of a matter of weeks. Nothing helped in easing the acceptance of that realization (and I don't think anything ever will), but in the acceptance of it, I found the determination to fight for it.....at least up until a point.

I don't know if anyone can actually truly appreciate their own mortality until the writing is on the wall in the short-term. Maybe, I'd not say people can't, but from my own experience my concept of death was vastly different and fundamentally shifted only when it was in very close proxy. Probably due to my youth, I don't know.
 
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SKM1 said:
I don't see how the comparison applies.
In any case I'm not trying to sell some pseudo-spiritual crap.
What I do advise is to take a step back and really question these inherited fears, and realize that they are just absurd. Constructions of the mind. Attachments springing from nothing but tales we tell ourselves.
Do away with all those burdens and then perhaps chose your own burden, that of giving life its (your) meaning.
Click to expand...

Last year there was news about some actor whose, according to himself, marriage was saved because of making their relationship open (they allowed each other to have sex with other people). And now they announced they've divorced. That's not an unusual pattern. They had clearly ignored some deeply important thing in the core of their being.

So what I wonder is that maybe the "just realize self is an illusion and it'll help you" kind of thought is a same kind of a band-aid that eventually when push comes to shove and it's time to die the ignored part of our very own being jumps up and shows itself. Of course the same could be said about belief in afterlife too. I'm just saying that maybe forcing ourselves to believe that what we experience now, our sense of self, is just an illusion might not end up working well when the actual moment of facing the nonexistence is right in front of you.

But then again, here I am spinning what you might've been able to make as a strong conviction for you - I'm doing what I earlier said that potentially makes having strong convictions harder online.
 
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Airola said:
Last year there was news about some actor whose, according to himself, marriage was saved because of making their relationship open (they allowed each other to have sex with other people). And now they announced they've divorced. That's not an unusual pattern. They had clearly ignored some deeply important thing in the core of their being.

So what I wonder is that maybe the "just realize self is an illusion and it'll help you" kind of thought is a same kind of a band-aid that eventually when push comes to shove and it's time to die the ignored part of our very own being jumps up and shows itself. Of course the same could be said about belief in afterlife too. I'm just saying that maybe forcing ourselves to believe that what we experience now, our sense of self, is just an illusion might not end up working well when the actual moment of facing the nonexistence is right in front of you.

But then again, here I am spinning what you might've been able to make as a strong conviction for you - I'm doing what I earlier said that potentially makes having strong convictions harder online.
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I totally see where you're coming from.
The key point is that you cannot force yourself to believe in these kinds of things. That is counter-productive, what some would call false enlightenment. You should choose a path and arrive at this point organically. I believe most people inadvertently do just that through their life and at old age seem to "get it".

On the other hand, this is not a moral code. It's just a point of view.
What you describe is more like a prescription for solving a problem.
Fear of death is not a problem to be solved with some novel strategy.
It's a natural part of who we are, and a state of mind that we overcome as we learn what life is really about.

When Christians say that they've found Christ, with that overpowering sense of joy, I believe they've stumbled on this state of mind. So this is such a path, of the religious kind. Afterlife and things like that might be just the way in which these people can articulate what they now feel to be very real and very powerful. Indeed, articulating these ideas and feelings is not just hard but perhaps simply impossible.

I'll stop rambling now.
 
To be honest I'm more concerned about the mortality of my loved ones. I find it easier to accept the idea of my own death rather than that of my parents or my brother.

That being said, I'd like to go out like a JoJo character. Dying to save a friend who will cry for me.
 
I don't know if this is exactly the same issue you've had, but you can either work towards accepting that and doing nothing, or work to having a longer life and a life where it feels like everyday felt like a day and a year felt like a year just like when you were younger. I've felt as I continue to grow (27 now,) each day and year goes by faster due to the fact that you're on a routine and that feels worse if you don't work towards changing that.

I read an article which talked about this extensively and the author changed his lifestyle to a proactive one to make sure he's experiencing something new every day or week, so that it's no different from when you were younger and your perception of time progression is steady and by extension it doesn't matter if he's 50 or 60 due to that.
 
YukiOnna said:
I don't know if this is exactly the same issue you've had, but you can either work towards accepting that and doing nothing, or work to having a longer life and a life where it feels like everyday felt like a day and a year felt like a year just like when you were younger. I've felt as I continue to grow (27 now,) each day and year goes by faster due to the fact that you're on a routine and that feels worse if you don't work towards changing that.

I read an article which talked about this extensively and the author changed his lifestyle to a proactive one to make sure he's experiencing something new every day or week, so that it's no different from when you were younger and your perception of time progression is steady and by extension it doesn't matter if he's 50 or 60 due to that.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I always called BS on the notion that time goes faster the older you get. Then about 5 or 6 years ago it really hit me. Could just feel the time slipping away from me. That's not a bad suggestion though.
 
EviLore said:
Regarding the end itself, it's time to decide to be either a believer or a nihilist, so you can have conviction in the afterlife or acceptance in lack of meaning. Sitting on the fence is liable to produce a lifetime of existential dread instead of making the most of the time you have.
Click to expand...
Lack of belief in a God or the afterlife doesn't necessitate nihilism or that someone leads a meaningless existence.
 
and 3 others said:
Yeah, I always called BS on the notion that time goes faster the older you get. Then about 5 or 6 years ago it really hit me. Could just feel the time slipping away from me. That's not a bad suggestion though.
Click to expand...
Yeah. I only started to notice it because of 2 things: I have friends who are almost 40, as well and they always talk about how a year passes in a flash and the 2nd is my family is sort of riddled with health problems- diabetes, strokes, etc. Thanks to that, in a twisted way, I thought about this kind of thing a lot early on and just decided to look into preventing that at an early age from various perspectives such as the above I mentioned.
 
YukiOnna said:
I don't know if this is exactly the same issue you've had, but you can either work towards accepting that and doing nothing, or work to having a longer life and a life where it feels like everyday felt like a day and a year felt like a year just like when you were younger. I've felt as I continue to grow (27 now,) each day and year goes by faster due to the fact that you're on a routine and that feels worse if you don't work towards changing that.

I read an article which talked about this extensively and the author changed his lifestyle to a proactive one to make sure he's experiencing something new every day or week, so that it's no different from when you were younger and your perception of time progression is steady and by extension it doesn't matter if he's 50 or 60 due to that.
Click to expand...
Yes, there are 2 identified factors AFAIK that change the perception of time as we grow old.
Novelty is one and the other one is how proportionally every second of your life become smaller proportionally compared to the seconds already lived.
Obviously we can only control novelty, but it's also very evident once you pay attention.
 
Lately I've been struggling badly with anxiety, I had a couple of panic attacks and all. I've been having intrusive thoughts constantly since I have OCD and suffered with suicidal depression in the past, which is a bad combo because you're constantly on the lookout for it. I'm a bonafide headcase, not sure how I don't rock a danger hair. Thing is, I'm a pretty happy guy. I love everything I do, I love my girlfriend, love my friends, love being me. Moments of weakness are inevitable, feeling like your time is running out is inevitable. It is running out. But it isn't anywhere as close as our mind tricks us to believe. Like the great Yogi Bear once said, 90% is mental and the rest is in your head. Don't lose perspective and get some help if your feelings develop into an obsession of sorts.

Besides, don't fear death too much man, it can't be worse than some random shit you may deal with day to day. It doesn't even have to be a mental thing, you could break your leg like real hard and that must be painful like a motherfucker. You could break your dick during sex. Try to live your life to the best.
 
and 3 others said:
I'm 37 years of age, and for the last 6 or 7 years, I've been having a hard time with my own mortality. When I was younger I'd get a car/bike loan (for example) and be like, "yeah, I'll have that paid off in 6 years" Now thinking of that, I'm like "Fuck, I'll be 43 by then". Everything felt so far away, and now im feeling like my life is more then half over. Just curious if ya'll have went through this, anything that helped you, and what you felt like once you made it through?
Click to expand...

if it hits you hard enough, it never fully goes away. You just have to learn how to make peace with it. Rationalize it however you want.

The one thing that i keep in the back of my mind is that I didn't exist before I was born, so dying is nothing special. And no matter what happens, you won't be able to perceive death.


As for the acceleration of time perception.....this is purely a matter of experience. The more eventful your life is, the slower time will move.

The last 2 years of my life feel like they lasted nearly 5 or 6, it's crazy. Something happened to me in 2017 that makes me feel as though it was 10 years ago.

The only reason time feels slower when you were younger is because literally every year was something completely new and novel as far as you maturing. New grade, new group of people, possibly a new school, your balls drop, you get interested in girls, start jacking off, blah blah blah you know.

When you become an "Adult" is when you fall into a pattern. And patterns usually don't require much conscious thought to carry out......so as a result nothing is memorable. Time starts slipping.


If you were 43, if you were to drop dead at 75, you'd still literally have more time left than i've lived in my whole life. That's a lifetime to me. And if the world doesn't implode on itself, medical technology is only getting better so expectancy is likely to go up.
 
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