I don’t want to die. Part of it - a big part actually - is sheer curiosity. I can’t stand the thought that all this cool stuff might happen in the future and I won’t be any part of it even as an observer.
I’m going to die and that’s that. Nothing I can do about it. But it sucks.
If the afterlife just means watching current American society slowly deteriorate and replaced by Chinese overlords, who then get replaced by Skynet, which then evolves into the world in the Matrix, I HOPE there’s plenty of popcorn. Because that’s the best movie ever. I’m not thinking the grief would last but for a few second on the scale of eternity.
The idea of not existing anymore freaks me out a little bit because I like existing. Other than that I am just worried after what happens before.
I too get the occasional Pangs Of Existential Terror. Used to be, when I was young, they were almost panic attacks over the meaninglessness of life and my place in it. As I get older I’ve come to realize that the alternative is eternal existence, going on and on and on FOREVER with no hope of ever resting. Between the two, if I had a choice, I would chose there being some kind of end.
That’s the two choices: Go on and on forever or, at some point, die. I have to chose to die. All of eternity is too horrible to contemplate.
I’m fine with believing there is no afterlife. I mean it’s sad in a way, but it makes me appreciate life more.
There’s a pretty big excluded middle between the maximum 120 years or so of a human lifespan and all eternity.
All y’all who are so sanguine about dying someday: would you be afraid or upset if you were going to die tomorrow?
Upset, sure. I have things to do!
Afraid? No.
I’m attending a beer event tomorrow at 7 pm. So long as it is after 10, I’d be cool with it.
Sure. But I wouldn’t be feeling better about it if there were an afterlife. The notion was never a comfort to me, even when I was a believer.
Do you mean if we knew it about it beforehand?
Yes, I’d be upset. I’m afraid of pain. My death would be harmful to my wife & kids. It would grieve my family & friends. I want to see the babies grow up.
But that doesn’t mean it upsets me that myths of the afterlife aren’t true.
I suppose there could be some other kind of life after death that only lasts for a short time. That would be fine with me. But when compared to eternity, any number of years of life is tiny. 50 years, 120 years, 5,000 years, however long Jesus gives you it is nothing when compared to eternity. If we all lived for 500 years we would still have these same conversations. If we went through a dozen cycles of life/death/rebirth we would still have the same questions about eternity. The only question, to me, is: will there be an end at some point. I hope there is but I don’t look forward to it and I wish it were farther away.
Yeah, I’m too far behind. But I’d be less upset than I would have been 30 years ago. And my father in law, who is 99, wouldn’t be very upset at all, if it didn’t involve pain for him or trouble for us. At a certain age you care more about dying well than not dying I think.
Yes, sort of. But I don’t mean the kind of anxiety you might get in the last few hours if you could see the axe about to fall. I’m trying to understand the idea that so many people have little issue with a short lifespan, and I wondered if they’d change their minds if it were even shorter.
When I think about dying tomorrow, I think “Oh no! There’s so much more I want to experience!”
I have pretty much the same thought when I think about dying in the expected 50 years or so. That’s such a very short time to be alive.
Based on how long men in my family tend to live, I may have 10 years or so left to me. Ten years back was 2004, which doesn’t seem all that long ago. 2024 doesn’t seem too far away. I’d like to live to see grandchildren and enjoy retirement, but the lack of an afterlife really doesn’t figure into things here at all.
More or less what I was going to say:
Why should it bother me in the least that I don’t believe in YOUR fairy tale?
What bothers me most about death is (and this may be selfish or not) that it makes me feel bad for the people who would miss me. Yeah, I won’t get to see the rest of their lives, but I’ll be dead so it’s not as if I can lament it.
Sure, but what does that have to do with an afterlife?
Why would they bother? “Hey, we need someone with manipulative digits to sort gizzywigs for 20 hours per Earth day; let’s recycle this Frylock sentience; it looks like it has just enough cognitive capacity to do that without haven’t to understand quantum loop gravity.”
Like Yossarian?: “He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.”
I’m just glad there is a Shane Black to celebrate the Christmas spirit in appropriately sardonic fashion punctuated by occasional outburts of deeply unhinged violence, and Donnie Darko and Watership Down make me deeply grateful that there are no giant intelligent bunny rabbits. I have no opinion on the Tooth Fairy except that the daoine sídhe tend to be fearsome and vengful, and so I’m generally opposed to supernatural fairies of any kind.
I am somewhat concerned that the afterlife may be somewhat like being trapped in Bruges: “Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf. I think I’m heading home.”
Stranger
I worry about dying. I’d like to tell myself that I won’t feel any pain, that it’ll be just like not being born. That nothingness can’t hurt. I’d like to believe that I wouldn’t want there to be a Heaven anyway, that it’d be incredibly boring and that harp music sucks. I’d like to be able to look at science, at the mass of human knowledge, and get some meaning and happiness out of it all. I know these things, these ideas, are true on a rational level. But I want to exist. More than anything else, I just want to be me, be alive, have my consciousness, my thoughts, my mind. My world. Forever. And actually, nothingness can harm you - it can make you worry about it while you’re existing. So then I’m worrying about wasting my precious time alive by worrying about death. And then I’m worrying about worrying about worrying about death.
And then I eat some ice cream and read a good book, and everything’s OK. Jeez. 
Those who believe in an afterlife will never know if they’re wrong, while those who don’t will never know if they’re right.
I’m pretty firmly in the second camp, but either way, it doesn’t trouble me* per se.* I just hope to get as much as I can out of this life while I can.