I'll be 74 years old and for most of my life I dealt with the idea of my death by not thinking about it. When you reach your 70s one develops the habit of reading the obituary section of the New York Times and weighing the age of the deaths of others with your own. You also pay some attention to the "quality of life," of people in their late eighties or nineties. Now, alter all this research, I think it is likely that I will die sometime in the next ten years and that's actually just fine with this idea. This exercise I have found to be strangely comforting and freeing.
Thank you for inspiring me to think outside of my day to day worries and then cycle these thoughts back to support a more balanced approach to my day to day worries
Recently re-read this piece...fearing death has never made much sense to me; even less so, now that I’m older. Fearing something bad happening to people I care about, being incapacitated... I do think about that, tho not fearful of it unless it seems likely or imminent.
I'll be 74 years old and for most of my life I dealt with the idea of my death by not thinking about it. When you reach your 70s one develops the habit of reading the obituary section of the New York Times and weighing the age of the deaths of others with your own. You also pay some attention to the "quality of life," of people in their late eighties or nineties. Now, alter all this research, I think it is likely that I will die sometime in the next ten years and that's actually just fine with this idea. This exercise I have found to be strangely comforting and freeing.
Thank you for inspiring me to think outside of my day to day worries and then cycle these thoughts back to support a more balanced approach to my day to day worries
Recently re-read this piece...fearing death has never made much sense to me; even less so, now that I’m older. Fearing something bad happening to people I care about, being incapacitated... I do think about that, tho not fearful of it unless it seems likely or imminent.