I'm doing 5 things
Hello everyone,
I’m turning 18 in a month’s time and I’ve recently been experiencing exactly the same as most of you. As someone already described it, a fear of an “endless sleep without dreams that goes on forever and ever” scares me… Sometimes it just pops up to my mind (usually before going to bed) and then I start to panic, because the idea of an eternal blankness scares the hell out of me. It’s actually more the word ‘eternity’ that scares, not exactly death. Because even an eternal life would be impossible/terrible. I want to believe in life after death but for me the alternative (nothing) that scares me seems unfortunately more realistic. As a musical person I get some consolation to the fear from music. One example is a song (by Neutral Milk Hotel) with lyrics such as:
And one day we will dieAnd our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the seaBut for now we are youngLet us lay in the sunAnd count every beautiful thing we can see
The first lines are about accepting the fact that we all have the destiny to die sooner or later. But when we die, someone also borns. That said, life will/can still be beautiful and others will still be enjoying it. However, I think that most people, especially the young (including me) are too selfish to feel happy about it since they won’t be part of it themselves.
And the latter lines obviously encourage to live in the ‘carpe diem’ way and to make the most out of everyday and every moment. I’ve tried really hard to live like that for a while now.. But it’s caused a certain pressure in a way, since I often think at the end of the day that ‘today has been another wasted opportunity to experience something special before I die’.
After all maybe it’s not worth it to think about death because we’ll never get the answer to it during our lifetimes anyway.
Feel free to comment, thanks.
