Fear of Death and Existence

Recently, my anxiety and hypochondria have been so stirred that I began to not only fear, but to also question my existence. Now, I don’t mean this in a suicidal sense, or a hopeless, desperate, negative sense, but in a thoughtful, philosophical “I don’t want to die not having made an impact” sort of way. I say fear because, I don’t want to die. I don’t think anyone wants to die. But, in our day and age, with our technological power (and abuse of it) and with all the hatred, racism, homophobia, sexism, terrorism, increase in diseases and natural disasters it is more than natural (I think) that many of us become fearful of being eradicated before our prime even begins. However, saying this, I also mean fear in the sense that I am also afraid of existing. I think there is too much in question when we exist; “am I good enough?”; “what makes one good enough?”; “why do I find myself comparing myself or my life to others?”; “why do others find themselves comparing themselves to me?”; “how much longer do I have?”; “is my time so limited that I can never get to where I want to be?”.

Now the problem is, I do exist, and not only do I exist, but, I’m afraid of dying and I’m afraid of living, so the question that should be asked becomes quite clear, “how do I create an existence, or a life, that is good enough?” I say that this is the question because the answer to the question “is anyone good enough” should always be yes. If you have a mind or your own, a heart of your own, and a soul of your own, then you are good enough. There is a quote that says: a flower does not question whether it is a flower, nor does it compare itself to the other flowers beside it, it just grows. With that same thought process, being that we are our own individuals makes us enough to be who we are. And so, the question remains “how do I create an existence that is good enough?”

I think the first important step is to remove the fear. As cliché as it may sound, without fear there can be no boundaries, so if you remove the fear, then you can move forward. Again, I get how cliché that sounds, but sometimes the simpler more cliché things are cliché for a reason; it’s because it’s true. I think one of the reasons why we fear death so much is because we’re not really living. Most often than not when an old person passes away they look or seem as though they are ready to go, which is probably due to the fact that they’ve done all they had to do. So maybe the key to not being afraid of dying is simply living. But then again, someone may argue that it surely cannot be that simple. But then again, maybe it can. Other animals don’t over complicate their existence, one of their may focuses is merely survival. Erik Erikson once said “in the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.” This then makes me think that in order to truly live and in order to be enough, one must find or create themselves, live out their lives as they want, go after what they want, do what they want, never ever questioning or worrying about people’s prejudice and then when the time comes being content with the life they had, the choices they made, and what they did with their time (cause surely if we know who we are and go after what we want, we’ll be happy right?) then they won’t need to fear.

And yet, I still find myself worrying about the pain that comes with death, and the over empowering thought that maybe one day I will reach my death bed, lay there and think “there’s still so much I wish I had done.” But then again, maybe this very fear is the purpose for our existence, living every day in a way that will allow us to not have regretted anything.