[alangou]

I understand the feeling. I felt it often as a child and would run to my parents crying about it in the middle of the night. It's the dread of utter dark—like every light in the world going out at once.

It turns out this question—how do we contend with the question of death?—is one of the most, if not the most, studied questions in human history, second perhaps only to why we came to exist. The collective answer by each of the world's cultures is encoded in myth, poetry, and spiritual and religious traditions. I would recommend the Bhagavad Gita, translated and commentated by Eknath Easwaran (https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-2nd-Eknath-Easwaran/dp/...). It's not necessary to practice or believe in any particular religion to gain something valuable from these books, nor is it incompatible with science to delve spiritually.

[protoman3000]

Thanks for the recommendation, I will check it out.

I’m already reading the Dhammapada (Gautama Buddha’s take on these and many other things) by Eknath Easwaran and can greatly recommend it to everybody as well.

[alangou]

Ah, that's on my list. I'm currently working through the Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living (https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Daily-Living-Verse-Verse-ebo...), which is basically a line by line reading of the Gita, except each line has extensive commentary by Easwaran on its interpretation and applicability to daily life.

It's much longer, and definitely not meant to be read in one sitting. Instead, I read it a little bit every morning, a little bit every night. To me, living a good life is hard and requires constant effort—the wisdom in these texts can't possibly sink in after just a single reading. Sustained reading and re-reading grooves the text into the brain, and over time changes our thoughts, which over time changes our actions, which changes the whole world.

[mock-possum]

I still feel like running crying to my parents about it as an adult sometimes - it’s very easy to spiral into obsessively dreading my own inevitable demise, it sneaks right up on me, especially lying in bed at night.

I didn’t figure out how to cope with it until sometime in highschool, when it really hit me that laying await all night having a mini panic attack about dying someday was really bad for my life. It made the next day suck, and for what? Worrying about something I ultimately can’t do anything about? Entirely unproductive - unhealthy even.

I’m better at setting it aside now. I recognize when I’m getting fixated on it, and I deliberately change tack - I put on music, I read, I go curl up with my dog on the couch - anything to distract myself sufficiently. And half an hour or so later, it’s passed, and I can lay back down and fall asleep. Ebooks and podcasts are super good distractions too.

I hate it. The whole thing. I hate that coping with it is even necessary. But I literally have no choice. Doom is on the horizon, and I need to get my beauty sleep so I can enjoy the time I have left. Boooooo.

[wholinator2]

I sometimes had this experience as well. But i recently participated in and cared for my mother's end of life care. I'm pretty young to be doing something like that and it was the most horrifying thing i may ever experience, simply incomprehensible. Everyone was relieved when it was over, even her.

But instead of having known the terror of a slow painful death debilitating me, it's kind of done the opposite. It can get so bad that you're glad it's ending. And thank fucking God that it ends. Holy shit hell on earth exists for some people and death is the final freedom from the fire. I'm so infinitely grateful that it was able to end, it was such an immense relief, that it kinda broke that whole illusion of terror. I remember crying inconsolably to her when i was very young when i realized some day she would die. It was so scary, and that fear stayed with me up until i saw what real fear was. Now that the fear has passed, only i remain.

[dpig_]

Ira Schepetin does a really good reading series on the Gita. Very accessible for atheists, since he reads it by way of advaita, which is not a belief-based system but demands you to observe the proofs first-hand.