Ask HN: How do you deal with the fear of death?

I try to tend to stoicism and optimistic nihilism.

If something matters to me I try to imagine how I would feel if I lost it and do that until it doesn't matter anymore. It's not a perfect process.

I still enjoy experiences but I'm ready to lose them and try to see the positive side and find purpose in making the right choice given the information I have. I don't castigate myself for making a choice that was bad in retrospective as that choice already happened and I have no control over that. I can just try to improve in the next one.

Thinking about loved ones who are suffering or are dead is probably the hardest thing to process but you have to keep your sanity somehow and get over things, eventually. If you don't do it now, either time will do it for you or you'll go insane.

For death, it's pretty simple. You won't have to make any choice when you're dead. What's to fear about something you can't control? Just accept it already.

That one time, I decided to confront my fear of death directly. Every day, when I got up, I would try to visualise and confront my fear. I did the same thing waiting for the bus, and on the bus, and whenever I had a free moment at work... if I was not otherwise occupied I would try to confront Death, and know and conquer my fear. After about 3 months there was a shift in the currents of my thinking, and it became impossible for anyone to look me in the eye without seeing their own fear. Anybody at all who looked at me would begin to tremble and shake, and they'd get away from me as fast as they humanly could, and not come back for anything. A very powerful set of experiences. (Since then I have learnt that the undercurrent of thought, and even specific thoughts, are visible in the eye of every thinker, and that thoughts of Love can also become the centre of my life... now it's all much more comfortable.)

You got to practice the Psh move on whatever the source of the fear is with the exact same facial expressions and body movements or it wont work - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khfiJ9q6IqI

Death is the ultimate Truth of our universe. Everything in the universe will cease to exists at some point of time, only difference is the scale.

As the serenity prayer says: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference"

Sooner or later you have to accept death, with acceptance you will be able to enjoy the gift Called "present"

First of all, if you go back in memory, you didn't choose your birth. By all possibilities, your parents truly never had a choice, they didn't choose to bring a particular kind of you into the world. And so on, you can go back. Even this particular thought you expressed here, did you choose it? Seems unlikely. If you ask what caused this thought, you'll see that it got triggered from somewhere, either internal/external. The point of this investigation is that, you cannot help very many things happening in the universe. The universe operates on its own, and you're merely a part of it, and you too operate according to external/internal laws. Don't take the societal idea of responsibility too seriously. Control is an illusion, choice is an illusion. You couldn't help but do what you did, all your life: so, relax, nothing is ever in control! Birth is not a choice, circumstances are not a choice, even your thoughts and emotions are not a choice, and in the same breath, death too is not a choice :)

I do not fear death as a christian I believe death is not the end. I still understand the pain it causes. I will attend a close friend's funeral on Friday who was in his early 40s. I am gutted for his family however I look forward to seeing him again.

Go through enough psychedelic ego deaths to know that death is not the end, just as birth is not the beginning. What is it like to wake up having never gone to sleep? What is is like to go to sleep and never wake up?

Do not fear death, fear never living. Do not wait until death to realize you were never alive. If you live so fiercely that you do everything you want to, there is nothing missed by leaving.

It's not the death that is the problem, it's the dying.

The body dies but the soul does not. Death is easeful, like walking through a doorway. Our soul goes into the inner dimensions until we are born again in a new body. This goes on and on until awareness realizes itself and we merge back into God. This is a way of describing the Saivite Hindu perspective.

I accept that it's gonna happen & do my best not to sit around waiting for it!

I've never felt it, so there's nothing to deal with. (Age 49)

Death is 100.00% inevitable. So make a plan. Unlike trying to land a job or retire, it's not a waste of time to plan for.

If you're religious, you'll either go to hell or heaven. Or reincarnate. This depends on if you're a good person. So be a good person, every day, until you die.

It also grants some freedom. You die because you give your last bit of food to someone. Or you die because you got an allergic reaction to vaccines. Or you jump on a grenade. A noble death leads to a noble afterlife.

If you're not religious, then why worry? Supporting your family? Get life insurance. Write a will.

There's a theory that we will become dust and our consciousness becomes pure energy, one with the environment. That's pretty cool, isn't it?

Anything I left out? Identify it. Plan for it. If there's one thing you can control, this is it.

Why would you fear something you won't be able to feel?

I work on ending death.

And in case that fails, I’m signed up for cryonics.

I pay for life insurance

Why fear death? Once it happens, it will no longer be your problem.

Read Pratchett.