Lately I have become obsessed with living forever. This obsession is borne out of a fear of dying, and more specifically of getting old, which is itself a means of dying. I have since concluded, with my head if not my heart, that dying is the flipside of living, and that you must make peace with this if you are to bury your obsessions, which is probably for the best. Extreme relativism tells me that neurosis is no worse than contentment, though I guess if you were to ask me (go ahead, ask) whether I would prefer to be content or neurotic, I would choose the former. Though perhaps we can get out of this lack of judgement by noting that the neurotic, beset by fear, focuses too much on death and not enough on living, and inasmuch as we are alive, we should acknowledge this fact. If this is the case, then we should face death squarely, allow it to wash over us, and push back against it as firmly and honestly as we can. Confronting death does not mean that we are unafraid – we have been programmed to fear death and all its cousins.
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