Hacker News Reader

Comment by raptorraver | Hacker News Reader

Due religious reasons I'm contemplating my death quite often. Not daily but I try to do it at least weekly. I don't say it has made me comfortable about being mortal but compared to people around me I seem to have more casual relationship to it. Like the other day my boss asked me if I'll come to the office next week and with smile on my face I answered, that yes I'll come if I won't die during weekend. He got quite confused.

Remembering that you'll die someday, and not just some distant day far away but literally any day or moment gives a good perspective to everything in your life and makes you focus on things that truly matters.

View on HN

I have the same thing. I often contemplate my death, and how I am going to die. And yes, I derive some comfort from it - knowing I have lived my best life and done the best I could at it. There are things I haven't achieved yet that I want to experience, so I don't want to go just yet. But if it happens, then I'm good with that.

But I'm an atheist, and firmly believe that this is all we get, and death really is the end of everything for us. I'm not sure I'd be so accepting if I was facing some kind of afterlife. Even ignoring the possibility of an eternity being tortured in heck, I'm much happier with the thought of everything just stopping than with the thought of it somehow continuing on another level.

It's interesting, how our fear of death drives us. Yet (as gp says) we never talk about it.

What often brings me joy is thinking about my life before birth, I like to think death will be just the same. If so life after death can't be so bad.

Quite so. Lots of people worry about the time they'll "spend" not being alive after they die, but nobody ever seems to worry about they time they spent not being alive before they were born. In the context of the wider universe, "not being" is what you are doing the vast amount of time. The century or so that you are alive is the exception.

Yeah, you'd think so. I thought so. But I can't get myself to die. After death, there's nothing.

And I understand now why some people say it's terrifying. Between decades of suffering or eternity of nothing, what would you choose?

Don't half ass the answer, go on a bridge with a heavy backpack zip tied to yourself, put a loaded gun to your head or have a fistful of TCA pills in your hand, whatever, then answer it.

I don't want to live, but I ain't keen on dying either, to paraphrase Robbie Williams.

I really wouldn't mind being killed by something out of my control, though.

I was depressed for a lot of the last ten years. I thought about ending it all a lot. Part of my calm acceptance now is because of facing it so much back then.

If you're seriously contemplating it, because life is suffering, know that it's not always like that. This too shall pass. There are good times too. My life now is something I could not have imagined achieving back when I was depressed and couldn't see any future for myself. Life is also randomly wonderful. I'm incredibly grateful to my past self for struggling on through, not ending it, and getting us to here. Here is good.

Of course, this too shall pass. Enjoying the good times in full is important, because they won't last. I hope I have the courage to face my next set of bad times with the same fortitude as my past self faced them.

Don't worry, other lives will end before mine.

that sounds more ominous than comforting ;)

I like the fact that we are made of atoms. Even if we die they will remain, even if it is only energy. So, for me its very comforting to think that sure i will stop exisiting as this configuration of tiny particles, however its not the end, its just a reconfiguration and i will become one with the universe, a tiny part of everything.

I like the "wave" metaphor for this. We are just waves in the surface of existence. When we stop being a wave the water remains, ready to be part of the next wave.

What you said to your boss is actually a common expression in my country. To say "I hope so" about some event in the future, we say "If we live".

Which country?

Tunisia, North Africa

I have always found the humility of Muslims saying "In sha'Allah" admirable. It's a beautiful way to remind ourselves that our fate -- and our life -- is not entirely in our hands.

This was also commonplace in Spain, traditionally. Some people, especially old ones, will say "si Dios quiere" literally every time they refer to any event in the future, even if it's just "see you tomorrow". Not doing so would be considered a "challenge" to God, or Fate, more generally.

Curiously, from "inshallah" Spanish got the word "ojalá", a very common term for expressing hope of something happening (and with no religious or any other "deep" connotation anymore; just like you'd use "I hope").

In Poland we have a saying "jeżeli Bóg pozwoli". "If god allows" which funyly shows that deep down people "understand" (as their pre-monotheistic ancestors "understood") that the God is the malevolent being that messes up your plans and ultimately kills you.

In parts of the UK the equivalent is 'if we're spared'. Some people may decide this means that the person saying it is probably a miserable old codger, the sort of person who says "mustn't grumble" when asked "How's things?"

In America I sometimes hear a similar saying of "Lord willing" which is a shortening of a verse from James: "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that."

My mom used to sometimes say “Lord willing, and the creek don’t rise”.

Memento mori.

I think about my own death, or some disability, at about the same frequency.

What would I do if I lost my hearing, or my sight.

It is one of the reasons I try to live this life, instead of waiting for some future rewards in an uncertain afterlife.

Yes, I am not religious, and I think being religious has little to do with thinking about death. Death is the great equalizer.

He wasn't expecting you to be suicidal or terminal ill or this being the weekend a bus ran over you.

And the phrase "if we're alive", is used for longer time periods like next year or more.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com