I find myself becoming more fearful as I age. I am 40 years old. im scared to offend people, im scared of dying one day, im afraid to get into a fight now cause I feel too old to be in a fight, i literally feel like a weak person mentally and physically. I never used to be like this when I was younger. How can I get my edge back or is this just part of getting older?
You can’t experience being dead. It’s the same as the time before you were born. You can’t experience a non-experience.
You will die one day. That’s certain. You cannot fight it.
Time is a human idea. It doesn’t actually exist. If you were to look at Earth from 10 light years away, you would see 2011.
Your actions, every single one, exist forever. You exist forever. You just don’t experience it forever. This is why it’s vital to make the best use of your time. Your life is part of a spiders web of actions, and the actions of others, and your link in the chain cannot be destroyed. It’s eternal.
What happens next, nobody knows. Various religions have formed ideas on the subject. Most, in order to get you to join, make a promise of experiencing life eternally - as the person you are. I think that’s improbable. What happened to aborted foetus? What if you have dementia - is it your 40 year old self? Your dementia self? There are a million holes in it, because the only universal, is change.
The best explanation I’ve read comes from Eastern philosophy which essentially says that your idea of yourself is flawed. You are not “you”, you are a part in a flowing process, like a nerve in an arm. The nerve may die, but the greater “thing” is what reality is - NOT the small voice 2 inches behind your eyes. That is illusory - because the entire experience cannot be accessed in full. We see all experiences differently. There is no “one experience”, we are literally the universe observing itself.
just think, 200 million years ago you would have seen rocks (not sure on that date but broadly making the point). Then you suddenly see the rocks have grown people. That’s what we are, we are not individuals who “broke in” on life like a foreigner - we ARE the whole show. Thus we cannot die, that thing will go on.
This is where the idea of reincarnation gets grossly misrepresented. The eastern religions never once suggested (originally) that you “Bluetooth” to another body. That’s your ego wanting to survive.
The eastern view is that you currently are one node in that system, the system is experiencing everything. Thus when you die, you will cease to exist, but you were never “you”, you are actually God, and so is everyone else. So there’s nothing to lose, you aren’t who you think you are.
This explanation works for me, it can (vaguely) be applied to any other religion and it’s almost completely logically infallible.
the other funny thing about this, is that most experience is toil and struggle. The eastern philosophy are wanting to get OUT of that, to not exist at all. We are obsessed with staying in it!
