Why do we fear death? You’re essentially dead every night during sleep, same thing if you’re under anesthesia, so why do we fear death so much? –I don’t think I am scared of death. Maybe, partially because of reading this take?Naval Ravikant
What's "small stuff?". Roughly, work that has zero chance of being mentioned in your obituary –Paul Graham
The longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have, you cannot lose. –Marcus Aurelius
The speed with which all of them vanish — the objects in the world, and the memory of them in time. And the real nature of the things our senses experience, especially those that entice us with pleasure or frighten us with pain or are loudly trumpeted by pride. To understand those things — how stupid, contemptible, grimy, decaying, and dead they are — that’s what our intellectual powers are for. And to understand what those people really amount to, whose opinions and voices constitute fame. And what dying is — and that if you look at it in the abstract and break down your imaginary ideas of it by logical analysis, you realize that it’s nothing but a process of nature, which only children can be afraid of. (And not only a process of nature but a necessary one.) –Marcus Aurelius
Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love. –Rainer Maria Rilke
When you're a little bit older, like my tiny personal self, you realize that death is as sacred as birth. And don't worry -- get on with your life. Almost every single death is easy and gentle with the very best people surrounding you for as long as you need. You won't be alone. They'll help you cross over to whatever awaits us. As Ram Dass said, "When all is said and done, we're really just all walking each other home.” –Anne Lamott
Links
How psychedelic assisted therapy can help transcendent a fear of death. “One day wife of Patrick Mettes noticed that the whites of his eyes had turned yellow. He was a journalist in his fifties working for MSNBC in New York City. Days later he got diagnosed with a bile duct cancer that had spread to his lungs...” Read the rest of one of the most incredible stories I have read here
Finding Peace With the Fact I Would Die – How an NYU guided psilocybin research study helped me deal with my cancer-related anxiety
Funeral scripts
Excerpts
an artist should die consciously without fear
Abramović was motivated to plan her service after attending the funeral of her friend, the author Susan Sontag, at Père Lachaise cemetery, Paris, in 2004.
“It was the saddest funeral I’ve been to in my life and she is one of the greatest human beings I have ever met. She was full of life, curious and just an incredible writer,” said Abramović. “I went back to New York and went straight to the lawyer and said my funeral is going to be like this. And then I made an entire script.”
Mourners would be made to dress in the artist’s trademark black “like a cockroach”, she joked, before revealing she would actually insist on bright colours, “even” pink.
“I want Antony [Hegarty] of Antony and the Johnsons, who is a great singer and friend of mine ... to sing I Did It My Way. He never said yes but I think he will be so sad that I die he will probably do it.”
Please help :)! I once read a beautiful funeral script by a British artist. I remember there was a low-key party with flowers, costumes and chocolate. I was very inspired by this but cannot find it anymore, maybe you know where it is?
Read my funeral script here:
Montaigne would echo sixteen centuries later in his assertion that “to lament that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago,”
- Zen Mind Beginner Mind - part with the Yosemity Waterfall
- Marcus Aurelius – doesn’t matter when you die