Ever since I was a child I was afraid of getting older and dying. It has been in the back of my mind for most of my life.
I had phases were this fear was not really around and then phases where it is the only thing I can think of. Ever since Corona it has gotten worse and worse. It just struck me one day while playing video games with my friends. Suddenly I was like “I WILL die one day. I will not be anymore … forever. I won’t even know that I am not anymore.” and I broke down pretty much immediately.
What followed was a phase of everlasting fear and anxiety. It was so bad that I just couldn’t fall asleep unless I watched comedy until was physically not able to stay awake. Back then I thought it was a result of the isolation of Corona. Since then I moved back in with my mother (due to different reasons). Everything was fine for a while but now it is back.
I should be happy. I handed in my bachelor’s thesis a while back, will soon move out again and have gotten a job in my dream career. I finished my therapy and while I am still not completely over my social anxiety but it is getting better and better. And yet the fear was never as bad. Last night I cowered into a ball under my desk and started crying.
It has gotten to a point were I thought about killing myself to end it. It is the same result either way. I won’t remember anything anyway. Even the pain and grief friends and family would feel is only temporary. They too will be gone with everything that made them up one day.
I have no intentions of going through with it but it frightens me that I even think like this.
I don’t know were this is coming from. Maybe from the feeling that I am wasting my life, that I am a failure and too far behind peers, that I am too old to have so little but I also know that it’s not like I could have done a lot better. Due to circumstances outside of my own control I am were I am right now but I am doing my best to get better. It’s just that it takes a lot of time and I fear that it takes too much time. I also lost a good friend recently so this probably plays into it as well.
Is there anyway of changing my way of thinking about death? I know I can’t change the fact that I will die but how can I accept it without falling into existential nihilism like I currently am?
Edit: I also already called my therapist but since it’s the weekend they won’t answer before Monday.
I have to say, if Sisyphus is happy that it proves my point. He is, after all, immortal. 🙃
Not really, if I were he doing nothing but an un-completable task I’d wish I could end it all. The point is that we assume he is suffering, but as our condition is like his we should imagine him happy.
… okay so I definitely read Camus differently (well okay I listened to an audiobook whateveritdoesntmatter).
We must imagine Sisyphus happy because he has accepted the absurdity of his eternal recurrence. It’s not meant to be ironic. The absurd man is supposed to acknowledge that the search for meaning in a meaningless universe is impossible, and then do it anyway.
Then there’s no disagreement on that. Sisyphus and humans are the same. There is no inherent meaning, we will do things that don’t actually matter for any inherent way, and we must make up meaning that isn’t actually there. My disagreement is with your assumption that immortality would make one happy and that it is possible within this world. You claimed he was happy because he was immortal, when he’s actually happy because he decides to be despite no real reason.
I miscommunicated I think! I didn’t assume immortality would make anyone happy, I just assumed mortality makes many people unhappy and that happiness is possible without mortality. I only meant that immortal people could be happy and we don’t need mortality to be happy, I didn’t mean being immortal is the same as happiness. Obviously not, imagine being immortal inside the event horizon of a black hole lol
Interesting, so basically someone immortal wouldn’t have to worry about death and that’s a plus. Maybe, but I doubt it’s possible.
Well also, someone who is immortal has an unlimited amount of time to find something that makes them happy.
Also also, if everyone that person knows is immortal they don’t have to worry about the deaths of others either.
True