[Text] A message I wrote a fellow redditor about death that I thought might be worth sharing.

Hey I saw your recent comments on your post on BPT and thought it might be helpful to share my experience, as I used to dwell on this quite a bit.

The first time I really got shook from the thought of death was when I was around 6 or so. My mom was not religious so I had never heard of the concept of heaven/hell yet. I was laying down in bed late one night and started thinking about what it was like. It couldn't be like closing your eyes because that's just darkness, and it couldn't be like sleeping because there wouldn't be any dreaming. It was just nothing, forever. I remember vividly jumping up in my bed, heart pounding, and a tear coming down my face. Sound familiar?

Over time these episodes have mostly gone, although I still dwell on it every once in a while..maybe 2-3 times a year. There are a few things that have helped me accept or deal with the concept of death, hopefully one of them might help you too!

The first is pretty obvious. If death is coming and is inevitable, then it just makes life that much more precious. Just as it is in our own lives. The pain hurts because the joy is so good, we appreciate yummy food because we know what nasty food is like, etc. Shortly after the first time I tripped acid (~25) I started to think about death a lot on my morning commutes to work. But instead of fear, I was feeling gratitude. I was feeling grateful for the corniest shit, like oh my god trees make the shit I breathe.. cuisines and food that took thousands of years to create and evolve from cultures around the entire world are at my fingertips..clouds are fucking dope and look dope..ice cream is good af..stuff like that. If our time is so limited, it just makes it that much more valuable. I have found that being grateful plays a huge role in attaining happiness in general, but that will go into a whole other conversation and I don't want to be more philosophical than I probably already will be in this long rant.

Everybody goes through it. Every thing that has ever lived has also died or will die eventually. Nobody knows what the fuck is going on. We're still finding ligaments in our own body, we don't know what the fuck happens after death. We just assigned names like dark matter and dark energy to shit that we think is there but don't really know what it is. Honestly that could easily contain what is generally regarded to as your soul, etc. The same way an atheist should cast doubt on religions due to lack of proof, we should apply to the lack of proof that our version of death is the correct one. I have a theory that if my conscious is this exact composition of molecules/dark matter/whatever, then after the sun explodes and blows the earth away, somewhere down the line this exact formula will happen again. It will take forever but whats a trillion years to the infinite right? Plus I'm dead anyways. This would be kind of like what is regarded as reincarnation. I have a ton of other stupid theories about death like this because who knows? Maybe that spaghetti monster church is right. Bottom line you are not dealing with it alone. There's over 6 billion other people dealing with the exact same thing, right now.

It is not in our power. We are only a very small part of nature, which is in turn a small part of a planet, etc. It's very understandable for us to be scared because relative to our little worlds, it is the biggest thing there is- but that is not a good reason to fear it. If someone is going through a breakup, the best advice is always to eat right, be active, and keep busy. We should not dwell on things we can't change. This is definitely easier said than done. Just as with people dealing with depression or mental illness, it may very well be impossible to just go to the gym, eat right, and stay busy- but it should always be the goal and should be something you are at least putting an effort to working on daily. Emotional intelligence is priceless and an extremely important trait to develop IMO. It is just as hard if not harder than any math or science, and the failure of emotion hurts very differently than a failure of a written test/game/whatever. Social skills/reading people is another trait I believe requires a ton of work and dedication to develop and is just as important, but that is again another conversation lol.

I could probably talk about this all day but I've ranted on for long enough already. Hope some of this helps even a little, and enjoy your weekend!

Submitted April 29, 2018 at 09:03PM by imstarvinn https://ift.tt/2JD3fsq