I’m sure the actual ordeal of dying is more often than not a horrific experience on both a physical and psychological level, but I’m talking in terms of objective pros and cons: cost/benefit.  I feel like people too often focus solely on the negatives when faced with the concept of life coming to an end: not getting to see your family again, not experiencing joy or love, being incapable of orgasms, or never getting to see the Browns win a Super Bowl.  I realize that some of those examples are more universally identifiable than others, but you get the point.  No one ever remembers that their are always two sides to that coin.  You may never feel loved again, but going along with that logic, neither will you feel lonely. You might never feel the touch of a loved one, but neither will you feel a broken bone or the torture of sitting down when there’s a zit right at the top of your tailbone:  not high enough on your back to avoid contact but not low enough to be safe within padding of your butt cheeks.

I should probably point out something that you may have already noticed:  my argument assumes that when we die, we’re absorbed into nothingness and everything we held dear is lost in the vast expanse of space and time.  I recognize that most of the major religions recognize some form of afterlife in which all the pain, sadness, and butt zits are swept into non-existence, leaving only peace, love, and unblemished complexions to reign through eternity.  I’m not trying to discount those ideas in anyway, and my previous assumption of death being equal to oblivion is not a reflection of my own system of beliefs, because honestly I don’t know what I believe; and I don’t know what I believe because there’s no way for anyone to answer the question of afterlife with absolute certainty.  Accordingly, I think that the inability to know for sure is exactly what scares people about dying.  They’re not afraid because they think their soul will be eternally raped by giant cheese graters, tormented in a lake of fire, or water-boarded by terrorist demons.  People are afraid because they just don’t know.

When you really sit down, accept the inevitability of your own death, and think about it’s immediate effects, you may realize that fear of one’s own death is actually a rather conceited instinct.  No matter what the outcome is for the individual, the people you leave behind are the ones who are most affected by the emotional aftermath.  They’re the ones that have to deal with the fact that someone in whom they have invested immeasurable amounts of their time and love has just been torn from them, leaving a scar that will never fully heal.  Nevertheless, personal anxieties about death occupy a large portion of our inner thoughts.  What will happen to me?  Where will I go? Will I even be me anymore?  Will I remember my life on Earth?

Who cares?  You’ll be dead, you selfish fuck.