When did you come to grasp with mortality? -

[Disco Inferno]

For me, I always knew people would 'die' due to media and current events
But when I was like 5, i really started to understand. I thought that people die automatically died when they were 100. I realized my grandma was 50 and being a retarded kid, I thought she would die soon.
To my credit, I wasn't wrong. She died 6 years later.

 

[knobslobbin]

Life fucking sucks, or put more eloquently by the Buddhists "existence is suffering". once you realize there's no happy ending then it becomes a lot fucking easier to hope the end fucking gets here already.

 

[Wright]

I learned not to be a pussy ass hoe recently, it ees what it ees

 

[Robert James]

When my grandma died when I was 5 made it pretty clear. I could never see her again, I couldn't talk to her again and she would never come back. Kind of got hammered into me that death was inevitable when I was a kid, lots of people died some that came out of nowhere. You learn that the best death is sudden, meaningless, and unpredictable. When you know it's coming and it drags on it's a kin to torture, especially if it's someone you are close to.

That's life, you live , you die, and you may get to come back but we won't know till we die first.

 

[Dildo]

I got it quite late in life,considering my religious upbringing and career that's hardly a surprise.

In all truth though I didn't have the existential horror or crash that a few new atheists have; I actually found the idea of eternal oblivion liberating. I was previously under the impression that for 99.99999% of humanity, what came after death was unending torture. So vs that,non existence isnt too bad.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

Seeing a childhood friend in a coffin.

 

[Pope Negro Joe the XIIIth]

Powerlevel I guess, but when the doctor told me that there wasn't really anything more they could do for my condition other than manage the decline.

 

[Cheerlead-in-Chief]

Powerleveling, but when I was given the diagnosis of autoimmune hepatitis. It's not lethal, but quite sobering. I'm now off another medication from today on.
Also, seeing many family members, including my great grandmother and uncle that nearly graduated law school in the Caribbean pass away, and a family friend that introduced us to the church we attend, and he gave me my first PC....I still miss Brent and I know he would've loved all the tech here had he still lived.

 

[Ita Mori]

Still haven't accepted it fully.
I delude myself into thinking I can find a loophole like César in Abre Los Ojos (Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky for you Yankees).

 

[Woke Blue Muttlema]

Depersonalization helps. I usually only can sleep after thinking Im dying after a battle, coming to terms with my life.

 

[Joe Swanson]

When I was about 10 years old staring at a reflection of myself in a tv and realized that I was gonna die one day

 

[Quantum Diabetes]

I smelled something rancid doing my paper route I had during grade school, told parents, police did wellness check and that house had a decomposing old dead lady in it.
Actually a lot of horrible shit happened before I was even 10, so it explains why I post here.

 

[Lemmingwise]

This is more of a conversational general discussion topic than deep thoughts.

It's most likely a sundry of people sharing their experiences with little interaction between them.
I guess one way to change that is to ask some questions. If anyone has better questions than mine, fire away.

1. Did a grasp of mortality change your path in life?
2. Would you rather forget that mortality exists? Why?
3. Would the discovery of an eternity vaccine be good for humanity?
4. Assuming nothing supernatural exist, is a belief in afterlife or nonbelief in afterlife better for humanity?

 

[Virgo]

I think I've always understood death. I'm not sure. I remember seeing a dead family member in hospital when I was about ten, and for me it seemed like a release for them. I've never thought of death itself as scary, just something that happens. I am more emotionally moved and affected by the response of everyone touched by death rather than the event itself.

As for mortality, I think it makes life more exciting, enjoyable, and precious. This life is, in my view, a gateway into the next, and death is that transition.

 

[Tathagata]

I read Epicurus' Letter to Menoeceus and really clicked with it in terms of what he says about death. Epicurus gets a lot of shit in popular culture, as his philosophy is conflated with hedonism, but it's really more about moderation and only accepting the conflicts that you can actually deal with. Here's what he says about death, if anyone's interested:

Spoiler: Death is nothing to us

Next, accustom yourself to think that death is a matter with which we are not at all concerned. This is because all good and all evil come to us through sensation, and death brings the end of all our sensations. The correct understanding that death is no concern of ours allows us to take pleasure in our mortal lives, not because it adds to life an infinite span of time, but because it relieves us of the longing for immortality as a refuge from the fear of death. For there can be nothing terrible in living for a man who rightly comprehends that there is nothing terrible in ceasing to live.

Seen in this way, it was a silly man who once said that he feared death, not because it would grieve him when it was present, but because it grieved him now to consider it to be coming in the future. But it is absurd that something that does not distress a man when it is present should afflict him when it has not yet arrived. Therefore the most terrifying of fears, death, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist death is not present with us, and when death comes, then we no longer exist. Death, then, is of no concern either to the living or to the dead – to the living, death has no existence, and to the dead, no concerns of any kind are possible.

Many people, however, flee from death as if it were the greatest of evils, while at other times these same people wish for death as a rest from the evils of life. But the wise man embraces life, and he does not fear death, for life affords the opportunity for happiness, and the wise man does not consider the mere absence of life to be an evil. Just as he chooses food not according to what is most abundant, but according to what is best; so too, the wise man does not seek to live the life that is the longest, but the happiest.

 

[Pitere pit]

When I was a kid, my family used to go to my grandparents house to lunch in the weekends.
After lunch, I went to read the books that my grandpa had, he owned a series of medical encyclopedias that I loved to read. One of the books explained death, how the process is and how to deal with it with mourning. I got scared.

Some weeks later after that I fell down from the top of a slider, I was unconscious for a few minutes. I felt nothing, like sleeping without dreaming. Years later I realized that's how death is. Nothingness. Nothing scary.

Since my teenagerhood, I don't dread death itself but how I'm going to die. Being hooked to machines in a hospital in my old age is not what I would like to leave this world. I prefer renting a boat, going to international waters with my family and party like never before and when my time is due, my kids or best friend would inject me with heavy doses of morphine and that's it.
Sure I know that maybe I will die unexpectedly, but if I reach to old age, that's how I'm going to do it. Partying and having fun, not being miserable in a hospital.

 

[Cabelaz]

When I was 16 I was thinking about death and just kinda wasn't scared of it anymore.
I find a eternal darkness after life oddly comforting.

 

[SimoHayha]

I don't know if I ever will. The only solace I find in the prospect of eternal non-existence is the whole non-existence part and lack of consciousness.

 

[FuckedUp]

I'm 20 and still haven't, though I "understood" death as long as I can remember.

 

[JosephStalin]

Twice. First in 1976, during the "tree incident" in Korea. Was scared, but realized I had the US/ROK Air Forces and US/ROK air defense between me and any North Korean Air Force aircraft that might try to drop a bomb on my head. Second in 2009, when the doctor gave me the initial diagnosis of a condition which is fatal if not treated. I was scared shitless. No allied air forces/air defense forces in front of me. Just me and...it.

It is no lie that the thought of possible approaching death concentrates the mind wonderfully. It was a very tough couple of months until the dimensions of the condition were known. Many tests, of all kinds, invasive and non-invasive.

The condition was monitored, and the fear somewhat dissipated. Things got worse faster than expected. Got the problem fixed in 2012. While I still remain acutely aware of my mortality, I know if this problem reoccurs it can be fixed again.