Fear of Death

I was talking to a friend today and she spoke of her worst fear: “death”. She mentioned how the thought of dying would cripple her with freight; this is, in my view, kind of bizarre, since we are ALL going to die, yes, even you!!! And we don’t have an expiration date either, we can die in the next few hours, it’s a real possibility, maybe not highly likely but still possible.

I told her: “Let’s suppose you were born with an expiration date and you knew you were going to live for 73 years, 6 months, 2 weeks, 6 days, 14 hours, 35 minutes and 16 seconds. Would it make sense to spend ALL of this time dreading the inevitable, knowing that the moment of your death is unavoidable? The answer is a resounding HECK NO!! you’re going to want to live those years to the limit, have as many strong emotions as you can, get pleasure from life, not worry about anything, enjoy the little things, the big ones, all of them!! You want to be able to say your life was worth living, that you were happy, made a difference in people’s lives, you were loved, admired and respected and those you left behind are sad, but content knowing you lived life the way it was meant to be lived. This would give you such a great sense of peace and well being, that you will see death for what it is, the natural culmination of one’s existence.”

She was brought about, I guess she was just expecting me to ridicule her for having such a childish fear, but no, it’s natural to be afraid of death, we are programmed to live, we are instinctively prepared to survive, death is the last option in our mind’s and body’s design.

So I asked her: “when you play a game, let’s say basketball, you play to win and sometimes you do others you don’t, either way the game ends. That’s life, a game, win or loose, it ends, so let’s go out there and win it!! Let’s make the best out of this game and WIN, let’s be prosperous and happy, so that once the games DOES end you can quickly look back and say like Sinatra: I did it my way…..