I do not know how people can deal with the reality of their own death - every time I think about deeply or read an article about it it just destroys my entire day. The author is much braver than I am. I am very scared of death, and what happens before (illness, losing autonomy). So far I haven't found a way to accept it.
More then a decade I made the decision to kill myself. Came within a few millimeters from succeeding. My mother caught me in the backyard wearing a sweater and jeans drenched in gasoline with a lighter in my hand. My mother was never really athletic or decisive, but she moved as faster then I'd have ever seen her in my life. Hugged me hard and refused to let go no matter how hard I struggled. Took me longer to realize why she was doing that. For me to burn, I'd have to burn her as well... and she knew damned well I could never do that.
The only reason I'm here is for her sake, but only just. After she is gone that there's little else that compels me to stay.
It's not as if I'm unafraid of dying. It frightens me just as much as it does you. But even now don't find living to be more appealing, for reasons I cannot remember anymore. I'm just here, a clock in the shape of a person that's waiting to die.
> “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
I hope you can find some joy in your life, find other things that are worth living for. You're on Hackernews, so I'm assuming you're into tech. Maybe you can apply your skills to more altruistic projects. Helping others might help with one's mental health.
Hope this is not too personal, but why did you choose to set yourself on fire? It's a brutal and painful way to go. It's also brutal for the person who would have found you, seeing the disfigured and charred body.
Maybe in a suicidal state of mind it's difficult to think about the after effects and all you can think about is to end the pain of living.
Honestly, it was what was within arms reach that I knew would work. It wasn't as if there were an elaborate master plan to execute. If there were, do you believe I'd be here talking about it?
Though... I won't deny the possibility that spite may have been involved as well.
There's not much of a story to tell that's not been told a billion times over. I wake, go to work, go home, browse, go to bed, repeat. The stress of life is there, tense moments where my teeth grind loud enough to hear. But is that so different then anyone else going through life?
That said I don't know if you and I are two sides of a coin. You ask the question on whether there is meaning in life, and answer that there is none. I look at the question, and find myself unbothered in any case.
How unfair would that be to that someone? Having to bear the burden of being the sole reason for another to live?
I spent years deliberately and intentionally slowly distancing myself from every friend, every acquaintance, until my existence was nothing more then a fading echo of a memory to everyone that would mourn not just a death of a human being, but the my death in particular. I've crossed paths with many of them in recent years, and to them my face is that of a stranger's.
So to answer your question. No. Not without some sort of actual desire to live from myself.
> How unfair would that be to that someone? Having to bear the burden of being the sole reason for another to live?
That's one way to look at it. But it's one viewpoint of many.
Another one is that they may just enjoy being around you and communicating with you without necessarily feeling you or your life is their responsibility. And on your end you might recognize that you bring value to other people just by being you. You recognizing someone as your sole reason to live doesn't place a burden on them automatically.
I've deliberately tried to keep out emotion of this and to keep it transactional just to illustrate a different, simpler, viewpoint.
Also a more concrete example: I don't know you but from the couple of comments you've left I really enjoy the way you write. The cadence, word choice, it's concise and thoughtful. Brief and mostly one sided interaction but already made my life a bit better.
I'll go a different route since I see the arbitrariness of everything, especially with the scope of time, but that scope is also what makes living until the end a more obvious choice.
We have been dead for billions of years. We have no memory of concept of time or ourselves beyond our lives. Similarly, we will be dead for billions of years, almost certainly with no sense of self or concept of time.
The tiny speck of time that is our human lives is so small it seems unimportant if not foolish to rush through it. If the default state for such a large percentage of time is no experience, any experience, even the ones that cause us to suffer, has such a novelty and quickness that surely you should just wait.
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I also like the song 'Any Major Dude' which is about just going to sleep because you'll feel differently the next day. If you look at things like suicide rates and coal fired stove availability in England[1], it's clear people rush to kill themselves who wouldn't have if they had to wait.
I think you made a slightly poor choice of words; I am waiting. I've done nothing but wait in a waiting place. Waiting in a chair, waiting for a sign. Waiting and wondering when it will be my time.
Pitiable attempt at bad poetry aside, it is not as if my mother is bedridden with illness. Barring the unforeseen, another decade at minimum I think is reasonable. Who knows after that.
Until then I am waiting. And doing nothing else but waiting.
I hear you and I'm sorry -- That is just the tricks I use to fight the calls from the void.
If you're just waiting -- I hope you at least find things you somewhat enjoy to pass the time. Escapism through books or video games or nature or whatever can make the waiting more bearable.
In reality, I think we're all just waiting but most have found some way to distract themselves from that fact :)
Thanks for the chat hope you find some kind of solace.
> How unfair would that be to that someone? Having to bear the burden of being the sole reason for another to live?
Is it really a burden? I've been through a very rough year and basically just live for my two wonderful kids. The only thing worse than the suffering is knowing my kids will remember their dad as being a coward who killed himself, and will have to grow up without one. You could see it as a burden but if I was that person I'd be happy to be there for them and profoundly wish they were happier.
I think it's a terribly fragile thing to tie one's life to.
Say I were to give you cup of water, made of the most fragile glass to ever exist, and asked you to hold it. I'd imagine that it would be fine for a few minutes or even a few hours.
Does that stay the same if I asked you to hold it for days? Or months or years? Forcing you to always have to look tie a hand to it, always having to pause every other aspect of your life so that this glass doesn't shatter from setting it down just the wrong way, or going outside in the wrong temperature? And you do so, but only because of the guilt you know you would feel if the glass did break.
With a parent and child, such a relationship is inherent. To a child, mother and father are their world, their protector, their provider, their everything until they are able to fly on their own.
But what of peers? Do you think such is the basis of a healthy relationship?
Were it me to be the one that would shoulder another's burden as such... I think there would be a small seed of resent that would take root in my heart. One would grow like a terrible weed choking every other plant until nothing else remained. I'm scarcely able to tend to own wellbeing, there is barely a single bread crumb to spare for another.
Yeah. I felt similarly about the importance of the kids when we lost a loved one. They kept us going. Life has phases, and this one will pass, and hopefully you will find the next phase to be better.
Maybe this relates to you, maybe it doesn't. I struggle with lifelong depression and suicidal thoughts as well. A dictionary of mental disorders and an extremely traumatizing childhood.
In order to defend myself against impulsive thoughts I've had to dig deep and discover purpose which made sense to me. In my case that is a duality of contributing to mankind however I can, and devoting substantial time to enjoy the contributions made by others. Slowly synthesizing and contributing to what it means to be human. Learning how to love and appreciate everything just on the merit of its existence. It's not enough to accept life, I have to refuse to die, and mount evidence against the utility of a premature death.
What convinced you that suicide was the right option a decade ago? A specific event? Is there something you want from life which you aren't finding or receiving? Or is there an inability to connect in an emotionally positive way with your experience? Or something else?
Some sort of fight I think, the details of which have long vanished into irrelevancy. Though it was not as if it were a light bulb that was switched off. It was a long road to that junction in my life.
Do you remember your first words that you spoke or the first steps you took as a toddler? Or has speech and stride been just a part of your life since a time beyond your first memories?
To me, the idea of ending my own life has always been there, as constant as the sun rising in the east. There may have been a time when it wasn't so, but I cannot find it anymore. Because of this were were half hearted attempts both before and after; a sliced wrist here, a sloppy noose there. The one was the critical one. The one who's cause was nothing more then a piece of straw that broke the camel's back. But it broke nonetheless.
If you don't know why you feel that way anymore, then it sounds like your perspective is ripe for change. The way to change your perspective is through introspection and experience. Maybe you should exhaust these avenues first; travel, perhaps? Or volunteering, or anything else which places you outside of your comfort zone so that you can encounter new perspectives.
And there in lies a bit of a problem. I could probably be 'cured', if I had any particular desire to be cured. Or perhaps put more into programmer terms; this is a feature, not a bug.
I've had decades to look inward and ponder why it is that I am what I am. And often the line of questioning leads down to one particular core reason; that I do not wish to be not suicidal. I've looked at every friend I've severed from my life, every decision, every opportunity I turned away from, every life milestone I will never experience. No first kiss, no first date, no birthdays parties or Christmas get togethers. There will be nothing to reminisce about at the end of my life, no taste of nostalgia at a life well spent.
And yet every time I ask myself if I regret any of it... I would have to say no, I don't. And if I could go back and do it all over again with what I know now, I wouldn't change anything. Had I killed myself then I think it would have left a terrible pain behind. As is, when I do kill myself, it will be as quiet as leaf falling from a tree.
But to entertain you. I have done international travel and volunteer work. I still do from time to time. But there's no enlightenment in doing so, just busy work for myself.
I'm very good at being completely and utterly predictable in every respect that people will see, even if all they know of me is a false name and a false persona. And thus, having met all expectations, be I become someone less interesting then the task at hand.
I realize this is likely what you didn't wish to hear but I do not know what else can be said. I am who am I am.
There are people who care. You aren't alone, there are other people who feel similarly. I've felt similarly (even today)
When you're in a rough spot emotionally, it's easy to believe things that aren't true. Please reach out for help from someone. And I'm not saying this because it's a platitude or because that's what you're supposed to say. I'm saying it because I know what this type of hole is like, it isn't pleasant, there is another way
Or there aren't. I know for sure that no one cares about me except my family. They care because we have a blood relation - but for anyone else, they literally wouldn't care if I was dead tomorrow. (I know because sometimes I disappear for weeks when things get too much. No one gives a shit, really.)
> When you're in a rough spot emotionally, it's easy to believe things that aren't true.
I generally agree with this, but don't you think that someone can come to a rational decision that life is not worth living for them? I'm curious what your stance on euthanasia is.
Life is hard. We never asked to be born, yet are forced to endure the hardships of life, which can be unbearable to some people. Not only are hardships wildly different for everyone, but our coping mechanisms are also different.
We can never truly understand what life is like for someone else, so saying you understand how they're feeling is indeed a platitude. I know it comes from a good place, but we shouldn't assume that the person is delusional.
My friend, it may be one of the most important lessons you learn. I have Stage IV lung cancer and have had some brain metastases along the way which can thankfully be cleared quickly (mostly due to my proximity to boston).
I do not know how much longer I have in the world. It may be 1 year, it may be 20. What I do know is that for my current mental health, I work to get to a place where I can greet death as a long-lost friend.
> I do not know how much longer I have in the world. It may be 1 year, it may be 20. What I do know is that for my current mental health, I work to get to a place where I can greet death as a long-lost friend
Wise words. None of us know whether today is the day we die, so we develop coping mechanisms, from keeping ourselves busy with other things, to faith in religion or technology, to sobbing at the inevitability of our death and the death of the people we love.
There is also peace in surrender, in truly accepting that we are powerless to prevent it. If we fight it we will fail, like so many before us. Thus, we live, we enjoy the time we have with the people we love, and we die.
Stoic philosophy covers a lot of this, I particularly enjoyed listening to Marcus Aurelius Meditations[0].
Live life, be nice to everyone around you, enjoy the now and be humble. Strangely those ideas are 2000 years old and yet we still don't understand them.
I have been in the same boat and this is a realization that pretty much cured me:
Fear of death is not rational. There is nothing like "being dead" more than there is anything like "not being born". Our anxiety of our mortality is just a cruel evolutionary accident. Feeling scared when facing possible death is an evolutionary function for making animals avoid dangers. Unfortunately for humans we got a brain that can simulate the future very well, and we can understand that we will die. These two generates our fear of death. Again, the fear we feel is not based in anything rational, since we will never experience being dead.
I vehemently disagree. From the human to the amoeba, avoiding death is our primary instinct.
It might not make philosophical sense to fear death, but on a biological sense, it is the utmost priority, and any organism would benefit from having an innate, irrational, all-consuming fear of its life ceasing.
Accepting your death is a learned behaviour, not innate. Either because you know that it will happen shortly, or because of high-order rationalisation such as meditation, reading a lot of philosophy books or believing in abstract concepts such as afterlife.
It all depends on your definition of rationality: if you "think" about it, there's no reason to fear death. But if your entire physical being had a say, as it should, as we are more than just pure thought, death is the antithesis of life itself, and must be avoided at all cost.
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
— The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused — nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says _No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel_, not seeing
That this is what we fear — no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
I don't fear the "being death" part, but there are some other aspects which are more rational:
* I fear the process of dying which is usually far from pleasant (in various ways)
* I fear the consequences of my death. I would leave behind my wife, children, friends who will mourn. I have small children and the idea that they would miss their father gives me the biggest worries.
* I fear the missed opportunities like seeing my children growing up.
I think it's the period before death that scares me more than the big empty void. The big empty of death triggers a bit of anxiety but the process of my health degrading is what I feel triggers the depressed feeling...
I don't understand this line of thinking at all. It's irrational to fear something you can't experience? That very lack of experience is the scary part.
Hi, I came here to tell the exact opposite, so I guess this is a good idea to do this as an answer to your comment. I feel like death is what makes life beautiful and precious. Because if you have an infinite amount of something, this is really not precious at all, is it? This is actually a central theme is Buddhist mythology: the realm of humans is seen as the most worthy place to be born, because it is mortality that gives one the possibility to understand and practice the teachings of the buddha. There are higher realms, where beings live many eons and with very little suffering - nice for the time it lasts, but it makes them unable to really understand the preciousness of live, and ends in bad karma and rebirth in a lower realm.
Knowing my life is finite is what makes me cherish beautiful moments. This actually often a consequence of fatal diagnoses: I could for instance observe how my father in law inceeased his interest in my children pretty much overnight after he was given one year to live by an oncologist.
There are meditation techniques focused on the awareness of death, and they can be very liberating: my favorite is called "the 9 contemplations of Atisa", if you want to look it up. I personally added a few contemplations to it, to take into account the secular setup in which we live: I find it extremely helpful to ponder the fact that we do not, and will likely never, be able to know what death is and what is the nature of consciousness. Maybe it is the end of everything, but maybe it is also the reunion with the great everything, or I will be reborn as a butterfly.
I also find the "charnel grounds" meditation to be very freeing, but some people do freak out there, so take your time.
It's the one thing that's consistently sat in the back of my mind since age 5 and hasn't left
The only response I have is this: the stress from thinking about dying makes life expectancy go down, so logically if you want to avoid death you shouldn't think about it in excess (this whole thing is contradictory, but a contradiction is the best thing I have)
> It's the one thing that's consistently sat in the back of my mind since age 5 and hasn't left
Sounds like my son. He's been having occasional existential crises since about that age (he is 10 now). I don't remember worrying about it myself at such a young age, though I definitely have thought about it too much as an adult. I've learned that lying awake at 2am in bed is the worst possible time for that thought to occur. Just have to turn on the lights in that case, and find something productive to do.
I keep telling myself that I didn't notice the billions of years before my birth, so I won't notice the ones following either. Life is infinitely long, from my own perspective.
My mom has ALS, got it completely out of the blue without any family history, and she had long living parents too. Thankfully in my country the care is okay, the government pays a nurse so she can stay at home and get help when needed etc. But it hurts to watch the degeneration, and I don't understand why more countries do not allow assisted suicide?
I am not afraid of dying really, but more so that I get stuck in a very bad condition that is like hell and I have to suffer a lot. If I had the option of medically assisted suicide, it would somewhat eliminate that fear as I would know that I have that option..
One thing I use to cope with it is that I am only 27 and maybe in few decades there are better treatments, at least one can hope right.. But looking at treatments for neurodegenerative illnesses, it seems they have gotten absolutely nowhere
As someone who does not fear death anymore I would ask you to find out what exactly it is you fear? If you have regrets or something you have not done you want to do you should either go do that or be at peace that you did not do it. Sometimes you also need to realize that what you are regretting you should not be. For example sometimes not taking advantage of an opportunity which you may be regretting actually led to something else much greater.
If you fear for the people around you having to deal with your death you can take precautions and make their life easier.
If you fear debilitating illness you always have the option of going when you decide[1] and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
For me, it is the oblivion and missing out on everything that will follow. I have known so many wonderful people, and seen and experienced as much as I have been able to manage so far, and it's all not even the shallowest mark compared to everything I'll miss out on. I've been driven as long as I can remember by an interest in nearly everything, and one day, it will all be gone for me.
I wouldn't say I fear this, exactly. It's an inevitability. I've had enough close calls that I know peace comes after fear. Still though, it's unsettling, and so far no philosophy or introspection has made it less so, and the only treatment I've found for it is more good people and more life.
Here in Belgium the system is possible the most permissive in the world. People can fairly easily get a doctor to euthanize them due to a loss of quality of life, even for purely mental issues. I recall a rape victim, young woman with a husband and young kids who did this. One of the victims of the airport bombings here in Brussels chose euthanasia because she couldn't overcome the mental trauma of that day. People who are paralyzed for life (but basically stable) ... the list goes on.
Nah. Here in the US the religious people worship other people's suffering. It makes them feel better. (I'm serious, there is this whole story of Jesus suffering were it's the point of everything)
Same for me - I think this is a profound contradiction between the unique ability of humans to think about the future (which enables them to know that they will one day die) and the basic self-preservation instinct which all living beings have.
Have you ever been very ill, or ill for longer periods of time? My guess is that much of a fear of death is a fear of the unknown, and a fear of unknown suffering.
People who have been deathly or chronically ill have less fear of death than those who have been healthy most of their lives, partly because they know suffering, and partly because death can be promise of a future relief rather than a punishment for them.
You will lose that fear if you are miserable long enough. I went through a divorce (and subsequent estrangement from my child) that left me deeply depressed and devastated. The depression eventually lifted, but the bleakness changed me in a lot of ways. I don't fear dying much. In a lot of ways, I feel I've already taken the worst life can offer.
I've had two surgeries where I've had to be put under. It kind of helped, as far as my anxiety for death goes.
I went from counting backwards, to being awoken, in what felt like an instant. No grand dreams or things like that...just waking up and feeling groggy in what felt like a couple of seconds, when in reality 60-90 minutes had passed.
But, what if I hadn't woken up - what if I had died on the operating table? It would still have been lights out and absolute nothingness.
I can only hope that death will be the same. One minute you're there, then nothingness. The process of dying seems to be much worse than death itself, so I hope I'll go quickly (huge aneurism, massive heart attack, etc.) or heavily sedated.
Death does not mean illness or loss of autonomy. Death is where we came from before birth, and where we return when we die again. The particles of our body are composed of others present and past. The self is an illusion, manifesting as ego.
Your feelings are valid but I struggle to understand. I’m afraid of death too but in a visceral way (don’t jump off a cliff, don’t drink poison, etc). I know I’m going to die and think about it sometimes but it doesn’t bother me in the abstract.
You can't think or reason your way to accepting death. Nor can others explain it. You reach that acceptance through having certain experiences. Long periods of suffering being one of those experiences.
I have made peace with mortality because it's something I literally can't do anything about. No amount of doing or worrying or indeed caring can nor will affect my eventual and inevitable death.
I might die tomorrow (or today!) or 50 years from now and I will definitely be dead a hundred years from now regardless of whatever I do. So I don't worry about it, because it's a simple waste of my precious and limited time.
Remember the old saying: Death and taxes are the two guarantees in life.
my impression is that you are closer to accepting death then you think. almost nobody can face death without fear. most people simply deflect this fear by means of platitudes and smart mental constructs. this is all just empty words as soon the time comes.
