Ask Lemmy

I am 68, I am sure as shit it is not ol’ St. Nick knocking at the door. I seem ambivalent actually. All I know is I really, really, really, really do not wish to feel any sort of pain if possible.

No

Fuck no. I'm terrified.

In my life I had 3 near-death experiences. All three were close calls, with one being so so so damn close that I felt my body shutting down and it was the most dreading sensation ever.

If anything, those experiences led me to realize that I still have lots to do before even thinking I'm ready to go.

I've had one foot in the grave (doctor literally said that 50% die the first three days. after three days you have a good chance)

I remember the time the thought shot through my head: "If I'm dead I don't feel the pain anymore" I immediately realized i'm not afraid to die, i'm just not ready to do that. So yes, I am prepared, just don't wanna (yet). I also know it's not hard on me (i'm dead then) but for those who love me and have to sit powerless and watch it happen and go on living.

Why would I need to be? I'm not going to have to live with the aftermath.

My loved ones dying, now there's a problem.

No.

The mere thought that my life is going to end at some point makes me freeze up emotionally and physically. It exacerbates my depression to a point where I sometimes simply call in sick.

It's sad. There is so much beauty in this world, in our existence, in our universe and one day my body will give up because of old age or because of sickness, depriving me of it all.

There is so much that I haven't experienced, and it's not relativistic. I don't buy the BS that some people try to console me with when they say that the only reason that I value life and all it's beauty is because it's finite. F*ck you all. I genuinely weep at the sunrise, at the beauty in people, at the undiscovered knowledge of the universe regardless. I wish my life would never end.

For those of you that know the Japanese animated series Naruto, I feel so much compassion for Orochimaru, even though his human experiments were vile and evil.

My depression sometimes makes me want to stop existing to stop suffering from it, but that's a sickness and an internal struggle and it doesn't represent my true feelings. I don't want to die.

At this point I'm not sure I'm emotionally prepared to live.

Yep. I don't want to but there's nothing particularly distressing about the idea. I've never felt "existential angst" or anything like that.

My wife (39) died in October. Her breast cancer moved to her brain and over 20 days she went from perfect function to not being able to speak or move and being in excruciating pain. Sometime over those three weeks I made peace with my eventual death.

I dont believe in an afterlife but I hope there is one just so I can see her again. But either way life is to hard to wish to live forever. Immortality is a young persons wish. When you get older and you see what life takes from you piece by piece you come to realize that the end is not to be feared but welcomed just so the pain stops.

I had a serious motorcycle accident in my early 40s. It was the kind that usually results in death, but I got off easy with a shattered collarbone, two broken ribs, and some road rash. I remember the initial impact and then lying on my back looking up at the sky, but nothing else. That nothing made me realize what death would be like, and it freaks me out. Thinking about how someday I'll just stop existing fills me with immense dread. I understand why some people are religious, it gives them an alternative to that dread.

Perhaps I won't always feel this way.

Right now? Yeah.

Maybe tomorrow will be different.

Motherfucker, I'm not emotionally prepared to do the dishes

No. Thinking about it terrifies me. I can't comprehend nonexistence, and trying to make sense of it ties me in knots.

I'm only scared of the pain that comes immediately before and the pain inflicted on my loved ones. Otherwise, if thinking purely selfishly, I wouldn't mind much. I had a goodorun but now i'm exhausted of life in general.

I'm just passively living life until that happens; so yes...

Yes

I don't need to be prepared

For death ? Yes, it will be the same as before I was.born.

The dieing might be horredous though,.so thats of some concern.

Couple months ago, I woke up to chest pain. Pain that I couldn't get rid of. I'm going through my morning routine trying not to think about it, but it just keeps getting worse. Then it starts radiating out towards my left arm and I am feeling really nervous. I was going to text a friend, but then decided that it was stupid and just drove myself to the nearest emergency room (because of course I wouldn't waste money on an ambulance, I'm an american, we live in hell). I came in feeling faint and dizzy and emotional and that blasted pain just kept getting worse. I remember the receptionist taking her fucking time.

Finally get a nurse to see me and she does a 12 lead EKG and has me hold up my sweatshirt while she's applying them, and while she's doing it, I end up fainting. I wake up almost immediately, but now I'm terrified. I told her I smoked a little weed to try to calm myself down, and now that's all she cares about, wheels me back out into the waiting area so I can piss in a cup for her. At this point, I feel like they don't care, my symptoms aren't being taken seriously, and if I faint again, I'm gonna die in this shitty rural hospital.

So I piss in the fucking cup, fire off a few texts to people I care about, and I lay down on the hospital bed when just... a feeling of complete calm and relief descended upon me. Wherein I was like "well, shit happens, and not everybody can achieve all their goals. You were kind, and that's all that really matters." and there I was, just, completely accepting of what I assumed would be a swift death.

Then the doc came in and said "your EKG is fine, your troponin levels (when you have a heart attack your heart releases "help me" signals via this molecule, troponin) are normal, you just have a bad case of COVID." I was floored. I mean, being sick is better than dying, but I was also just... ready to die? They disconnected my IV and shit and sent me on my way. Walked out into the night back to my car in such a daze.

But hey, I know when I die I'll feel a sense of peace and relief that one can only dream of. Imagine winning the lottery and knowing you'll be OK for the rest of your life. I imagine that it carries around the same level of peace I felt on that bed waiting for death.

I've been shot, I've been stabbed, I've had thousands of pounds of aluminum fall straight toward me and get caught in the last half meter, I've had semis clip my clothing while on a bike and send me flying, I've been pushed off the road by shitty carbrains who can't share anything, and I've been told I have less than a week before most of my organs shut down.

I've thought I was going to die many times. And not once did I think anything other than "huh. So this is it". Most of the I was laughing afterward, and I'm not 100% why except maybe a nervous response.

Ultimately I don't know if I'm emotionally prepared to die, but there's things I am absolutely willing to die for. I'd rather NOT die, but I'd say I am accepting of it.

Uhhhhhhh I'm not actually sure I answered your question, sorry.

This is an impossible question to answer with certainty for pretty much everyone. Maybe the extremely suicidal or the terminally ill, but likely not anyone else.

Death (and our perceived relationship to it) changes with our proximity to it. So, being existentially and emotionally prepared for death when you’re young is very different from when you’re old, and from when death is pretty much imminent. I would wager even people who report a high degree of confidence that they are prepared for their eventual death are less so (and likely much less so) when they are facing imminent death. I imagine the number of people who don’t experience fear when their death is imminent is actually quite low.

I have considered myself prepared for death for much of my adult life, but since sometime in my 30’s I have also accepted that I can’t predict my preparedness in the months-to-moments before I die. The existential threat of your existence ending is simply too dependent on its immediacy to be predicted with certainty ahead of time.

Yes. Please strike me down where I stand.

Yes, i am. I had a challenging health episode last year, and am a member of a legal framework for assisted dying. I worked through the emotions, the letting go and the planning. It was very liberating, hard and sad. And I think I grew as a person in the process. I had a good life, and am happy I can live more, but I can confidently say I know how it feels, and if the world goes to shit I am out of here. I am not suicidal at all and enjoy family and my body, food, music, etc.

I think so. I'd be disappointed, and I'd worry about practicalities, but I've had a lot of circumstances that have caused me to think about my existence and my impermanence/mortality so I feel like I've had plenty of space to work through most of the feelings and questions around that. Everything dies, it's cool. I'm just grateful about getting to exist for a second.

The short answer is no. But if I were to die today, I wouldn’t be afraid. I’d be angry.

In my mid 50’s I’ve just started living my best life after decades of being pushed around and doing what I thought I “should” do to be happy and make everyone else happy. So I want to enjoy this. And I also have a young son and I want to make sure I get to see him grow up and be able to impart a little wisdom to him before I go.

That being said, death doesn’t scare me. My body is aging, slowing down, getting more high-maintenance and I can see a point in the future where I’m going to get sick of it and want out of it. I think that’s natural and right. A death at the end of a full, well-lived life is not tragic. It’s beautiful and good. Death is tragic when it comes too soon and deprives you of realizing your full potential.

I am currently realizing my full potential and having fun for once. I’d like to bask in this for a little while longer if that’s okay with the universe.

Yes. I've met enough people and seen enough things. It's not going to get better.

Also we're rapidly heading towards a future without topsoil, fresh water and breathable air. Oh and resource wars/ww3. Good times right?

United Nations: 90% of Earth’s topsoil at risk of depletion by 2050

World Economic Forum: Global freshwater demand will exceed supply 40% by 2030, experts warn

Stockholm University: Seven of nine planetary boundaries now breached

Hopefully cancer or something gets me before shit gets really bad in my area.

In first grade I dreamed of taking my own life because I was miserable. I guess I instinctively knew my mother hated my existence. She stored a 5 gallon bucket nearly full of paint thinner in my closet that leaked and I lived in that for around 6 months before she "found" it. We had a garage and a basement so why store it in a child's closet? She confirmed that when she later told me while drunk that she had her whole life planned out and then she had me.

I was an outcast in school. I've been literally thrown on the ground and kicked so badly the school sent me to the hospital because they were worried about internal bleeding. I didn't even know the kid and was locking my bicycle up and blind sided that time.

I was molested by my cousin. Told I was worthless by my mother and her boyfriends, forced to eat adult sized food portions from a young age. Thrown on the ground and had my head shoved in the gravel because I couldn't keep a grip on an old trash water heater and dropped it by her boyfriend/2nd cousin. Punched by him because I didn't find something fast enough. Among other things.

Ended up married to a woman who had multiple miscarriages, had a son born 3 months premature who died in the NICU at 9 days old. Eventually gave up on the idea of children after another miscarriage. She was injured at work and got hooked on pain killers, then decided to leave me.

My second wife passed away after a long illness. I woke up one morning to find her warm and not breathing. I started CPR and nearly lost it when I broke her ribs.

I'm also considered high intelligence. My iq is around 140. I honestly feel like a failure.

Feel free to feed the following prompts into your favorite Ai and let it do the math.

What would an assumed IQ of a 3rd grade child be if they were told they were ranked in the top ten percentile of children through standardized testing.

And in 8th grade the same child was told that their standardized testing showed they had all of their scores ranked at a minimum of a sophmore in college with some area's being closer to graduate school levels what would their assumed IQ be.

I literally relive my life all the time with memories playing in my head on repeat while I process them. It's a form of C-PTSD caused by my experiences and intelligence. I also deal with recurring headaches and body pain. I truly only feel at peace when I am under water.

I've nearly died a couple times for various reasons. I nearly had my foot ripped off by a machine while working construction. My hands are all scarred from injuries. I made peace with my life ending years ago. I'm not suicidal I just don't really care.

No, I came out a little over 2 years ago and just started living as my true self.

Yup. I have no regrets. Sure, I have things I want to do like being in a loving relationship. But, if I die now, I die. Nothing I can do about that.

Absolutely not. It causes me a lot of anxiety and dread. Mainly because I can't imagine what non-existence is like. But also missing out on stuff, such as scientific discoveries, etc.

When I die, I won't have emotions anymore.

If I was, I would BE dead. What is the advantage to being alive if you are no longer emotionally attached to it?

It does scare me a bit, but I've thought about death and non-existence from time to time and gotten more comfortable with it. Not totally comfortable but it doesn't horrify me anymore.