My wife passed this year from cancer. Looking back we had no idea how close we were to the end, and in the last few weeks her beautiful mind was influenced by the disease. I’m sure someone on HN is going through this at least adjacently and my recommendation is to not wait to the end to have important conversations. For those that aren’t going through this now, maybe for a little while live life like you are...it might inform your priorities and perspective.<p>My 17 year old daughter was already dealing with a life-altering chronic disease and losing her mom plus all of this pandemic bullshit has really made a mess. She broke down crying last night struggling over the idea of death and that everything seems to be pitted against her. It’s hard to know exactly what to say in those moments, maybe some of these words from a person at the doorstep will help her.<p>For what it’s worth we do have her seeing both a counselor and a psychiatrist but that only goes so far...at the end of the day it’s you and your thoughts staring at the ceiling while you’re trying to get to sleep for the 5am shift tomorrow.
”But everybody dies, and there will always be places and experiences missing from anyone’s life – the world has too much beauty and adventure for one person to see.”<p>Damn gut punch...
"Meditating on death" and "premeditation of future ills" is a big theme in Stoicism (and the broader 'Hellenistic Philosophy'). Seneca's letters have many different exhortations on "preparing for death". Some choice quotes:<p>• "Many people grasp and hold on to life, like those caught by a flash flood who grasp at weeds and brambles. Most are tossed about between the fear of death and the torments of life: they do not want to live but do not know how to die. Cast off your solicitude for life, then, and in doing so make life enjoyable for yourself. No good thing benefits us while we have it unless we are mentally prepared for the loss of it." — Seneca<p>• "Epicurus says 'It is a fine thing to learn death thoroughly.' Perhaps you think it is a waste of time to learn something you will need to use only once. But that is the very reason we ought to rehearse: if we cannot test whether we know it, we should be learning it always." — Seneca riffing on Epicurus (not to be confused with <i>Epictetus</i>, a Stoic; he even has a discourse titled "Against Epicurus")<p>• "As the water clock does not empty out its last drop only but also whatever dripped through it before, so our last hour of existence is not the only time we die but just the only time we finish dying. Death is not one event; the death that takes us is our last." — Seneca<p>• "Years are not given out by quota. There's no way to know the point where death lies waiting for you, you must wait for death at every point." — Seneca<p>• "Let death be before your eyes every day, and you will never have a base thought or an excessive desire." — Marcus Aurelius<p>• "The torment we feel comes about through our own agency, because we become alarmed when we believe that death is close at hand. But isn't it close to everyone, ready in place and every moment?" — Seneca<p>• "Think about arranging the present as best as you can, with serene mind. All else is carried away as by a river." — Horace<p><pre><code> •••
</code></pre>
Sources for quotations: Seneca's <i>'Letters on Ethics'</i> (full set of letters, excellently translated by Graver and Long); the others are from <i>'What is Ancient Philosophy?'</i> by Pierre Hadot.
Having just turned 31 this hits home. I appreciate the positivity he could find in the twilight of his days. I can't help but feel I may lack the courage to face death the same way. His focus on gratitude really does seem to match what I understand to be the best way to find joy in the often bleak life we find ourselves in. There is almost always someone or something to appreciate in our lives.
My great fear is not dying but leaving the people behind who depend on me.<p>I mean as the only earning member of my family the scariest post part about dying is what will happen to family.<p>I don't have a big life insurance and not a lot of savings. So it gives me chills that my wife and daughter will have to fend for themselves or live a lesser life should I cease to exist suddenly one day.
rawls' social utility theory stated that by maximizing the welfare of the worst-off person, you improve all of society; at the time i learned it it seemed like a strange idea.<p>but then i thought: every moment in your life can be valued according to how much life you have ahead of it. the present moment is the most valuable; and the very last moment, the least -- you have nothing ahead of it. i thought: if you live your life such that the last moment, which is the least valuable in that sense, is as good as possible -- perhaps that would improve the totality of the rest of your life.<p>this has all been covered by the buddhist concepts on this thread but i thought it was interesting that we can come to this same idea somewhat independently. (maybe rawls was inspired by buddhism? i don't know.)
“All that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will become otherwise and will become separated from me”— Siddhartha Gautama.<p>As a Buddhist we do “contemplation of death” meditation on a regular basis. It involves imagining our last few hours on our deathbed. It is a wonderful exercise to help put things in context. It makes you behave differently towards people you meet, even strangers.
I'm the same age and not at all at peace with my mortality - the dominant feeling being envy of those who get to live after my death.<p>If I wrote a book with ghosts, zombies or other undead I would give the antagonists this as their reasons for hating the living.<p>Anyway that point about vulnerability is spot on. When I hug my SO I often reflexively blurt something among the lines of "softness is important", but what I really mean by that is vulnerability is important - this is something I had to learn from her and it's what helped me improve myself as a person.
Imagine that there's some form of brain time anomaly when you die, where your last moment stretches and you live on in a dream, with the dreams during your life being the test runs.
Has anyone else read “Tripping Over the Truth: The Metabolic Theory of Cancer”?<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23496164" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23496164</a>
For those who would like to read, but stuck behind paywall: <a href="https://beta.trimread.com/articles/36666" rel="nofollow">https://beta.trimread.com/articles/36666</a>
Rainn Wilson's Soul Pancake has a long playlist of videos featuring dying people.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzvRx_johoA8ITQgxBpeJTaDUhhIB7bfX" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzvRx_johoA8ITQgxBpeJ...</a>