To just not be able to believe it

[CutToChase]

Okay so maybe I had too much wine.
But I'm sitting here thinking I can't believe that me, and all the people I know, my family, the people I love and also just everyone around the world, all those lives that exist and everybody's individual quests... One day none of us who exist right now will exist. All our big feelings and hopes, and all these different bright personalities... We will just disappear, like none of us ever really mattered.

I just cant get my head around it. It seems so unfair.
I'm also listening to this song which is really upping the emotion: m.youtube.com/watch?feature=share&v=LESFuoW-T7I

[Fredelliottisayfredelliott]

@Inextremis

I think the same thing from time to time, OP - but I also think (and bear with me here, it's not the easiest thing to explain) - that time is just the way we experience existence - what was will always be, and what will be, already exists - like the whole of existence just 'is' and our consciousness travels, via time, through it. So nothing really goes away, it's still there, just we can't see it from where we are.

I think this when entirely sober, too :D

I love this! I've never thought of this concept. And I love this thread, very thought provoking!

[lazyfecker]

@whirlinginspace

I'm in my early fifties too, and something that's really sunk in recently about when I eventually die is all the storylines of humanity I'll never see resolved. Big things like climate change and cures for cancer, but also, one day, even smaller things like film sequels and the next prime minister. I mean it seems too obvious to need saying, but for some reason it's really struck me a couple of times lately. There will be amazing discoveries and shocking events and problems will be solved, but I won't even be a spectator, and I'll never get to find out what happened, however desperate I am to know.

I am a shielder in my 50s and I just know the vaccine for COVID will be discovered the day after I die🤪

[lazyfecker]

@Supertree

I also use the idea that one day I will be dead and none of the stupid things I agonise over now will matter to snap myself out of overthinking.

I don't know if it was growing up in Scotland or the era that some of the people came from but when I was young and at work I used to hear a lot of people say "oh never mind - it won't matter matter 100 years after I'm dead! something kind of comforting in that

[NorthGirl2]

I also think death is a much better alternative to living forever. Just imagine the stress of living and working forever. It would become so.... boring.

[Supertree]

I also use the idea that one day I will be dead and none of the stupid things I agonise over now will matter to snap myself out of overthinking.

[Supertree]

I feel the same way but in a way that I find comforting... I think about how I will one day die and so will everybody I ever knew, but then I think about how every single person in existence in the world right now is in the same position, and so will every other person ever born be. I sort of see us as slices of humanity who are all existing at the same time. Obviously, there is overlap because people don’t all get born and die on the same day, but I think of my chunk of humanity as all of the people who were alive when I was born and all of the people who will be alive when I die. We all have each other right now and we’re all in the same situation. That makes me feel soothed.

I feel very sad about one day not being here when my children are still here. I know they are likely to be adults by then and to have developed their own strong relationships, which comforts me a little bit, but it’s mostly something I have to just push out of my mind.

[NorthGirl2]

I think in a strange way it's comforting. When I am feeling especially anxious about something I try and remember - one day we will all be dead and it won't matter. It makes me realise we should enjoy the here and now, and not worry so much about what could happen. And whatever happens, good or bad, will not be forever. We learn to cope with the bad, and we need to cherish the good while it lasts and not take things for granted.

[MitziK]

@weechange

this thread is why religion was invented.

and Pink Floyd.


Time

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way...

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
And you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter; never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines.
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way

The time is gone, the song is over
Thought I'd something more to say.



Eclipse

All that you touch
And all that you see
All that you taste
All you feel
And all that you love
And all that you hate
All you distrust
All you save
And all that you give
And all that you deal
And all that you buy
Beg, borrow or steal
And all you create
And all you destroy
And all that you do
And all that you say
And all that you eat
And everyone you meet
And all that you slight
And everyone you fight
And all that is now
And all that is gone
And all that's to come
And everything under the sun is in tune
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon




Thanks for the little slice of Nihilism, OP.

[Member984815]

You die twice , the first is when you actually die the second is when your name is last spoken

[CountShatula]

[whirlinginspace]

I'm in my early fifties too, and something that's really sunk in recently about when I eventually die is all the storylines of humanity I'll never see resolved. Big things like climate change and cures for cancer, but also, one day, even smaller things like film sequels and the next prime minister. I mean it seems too obvious to need saying, but for some reason it's really struck me a couple of times lately. There will be amazing discoveries and shocking events and problems will be solved, but I won't even be a spectator, and I'll never get to find out what happened, however desperate I am to know.

[NoraEphronsBoltintheNeck]

[quote CutToChase]@MajesticWhine
I've had two glasses of red wine and a Heineken. Granted, on an empty stomach.

Does anyone have any more sweeping heart twinging 80s songs?[/quote]
Just listening to 'Don't dream it's Over' by Paul Young

[PoloNeckKnickers]

It has only been since the death of my mum last year that it has finally sunk in fully that none of us lives for ever. I knew that one day she would die, but there was always a tiny part of me that thought she would never die as I couldn't imagine my life without my mum in it. I know that makes me sound a bit bonkers. I still enjoy life but not to the same degree. I'm in my early 50s and am aware that even though that isn't considered old these days, time is definitely not on my side.
I see old buildings or trees and think that they will be here long after I've gone and it fills me with dismay.

[Oilyoilyoilgob]

@pallisers I got goosebumps from that poem-that is a wonderful piece of writing.

“someone’s waist will not be marked with elastic in the future“ bloody hell, beautiful and sad 😓
I’ve always enjoyed the melancholy.

[Oilyoilyoilgob]

@CutToChase there’s a very interesting phenomenon about your description of going off the train platform. I found this out as I have similar thoughts, or when driving over high bridges 😮 Hope you find it interesting 😊

www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2018/06/29/the-call-of-the-void

[lazyfecker]

I think about how the Earth will be over for all life too,

"The Sun’s death rattle
All good things eventually come to an end. Every book has a final chapter, every pizza has one last bite, and every person has a dying breath.
And one day, about 4 or 5 billion years from now, the Sun will burn through its last gasp of hydrogen and start burning helium instead.
"Once hydrogen has stopped burning in the core of the Sun, the star has formally left the main sequence and can be considered a red giant," Scudder said.
"It will then spend about a billion years expanding and burning helium in its core, with a shell around it where hydrogen is still able to fuse into helium."

Earth, on the other hand, has two options: either escape the expanding Sun or be consumed by it. But even if our planet slips out of the Sun’s reach, the intense temperatures will burn it to a sad, dead crisp."

www.sciencealert.com/watch-here-s-how-the-sun-will-eventually-destroy-earth

[Mummyoflittledragon]

I will not cease to exist. I will be transformed.

Thank you for the poetry.

[lazyfecker]

@pallisers

Another one by an Irish poet, Denis O Driscoll (he died fairly young himself).

Someone
Dennis O'Driscoll

someone is dressing up for death today, a change of skirt or tie
eating a final feast of buttered sliced pan, tea
scarcely having noticed the erection that was his last
shaving his face to marble for the icy laying out
spraying with deodorant her coarse armpit grass
someone today is leaving home on business
saluting, terminally, the neighbours who will join in the cortege
someone is paring his nails for the last time, a precious moment
someone’s waist will not be marked with elastic in the future
someone is putting out milkbottles for a day that will not come
someone’s fresh breath is about to be taken clean away
someone is writing a cheque that will be rejected as ‘drawer deceased’
someone is circling posthumous dates on a calendar
someone is listening to an irrelevant weather forecast
someone is making rash promises to friends
someone’s coffin is being sanded, laminated, shined
who feels this morning quite as well as ever
someone if asked would find nothing remarkable in today’s date
perfume and goodbyes her final will and testament
someone today is seeing the world for the last time
as innocently as he had seen it first

Brrr! That is brilliant!

[lazyfecker]

Dust In The Wind
Song by Kansas

I close my eyes
Only for a moment and the moment's gone
All my dreams
Pass before my eyes with curiosity
Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind
Same old song
Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
Oh, ho, ho
Now don't hang on
Nothin' last forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won't another minute buy
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
(All we are is dust in the wind)
Dust in the wind
(Everything is dust in the wind)
Everything is dust in the wind
(In the wind)

[BashfulClam]

@73kittycat73 @Wobblywibblywoo seversmnofvtyenokdervtelifions such as pagans believe the veils between this physical and spirit world is at its thinnest on Samhain (Halloween). This is where all the customs codes my d from. You would ‘Guise’ to confuse spirits so they could snatch you, you would give bc an offering to the spirits of your ancestors (sweets to guiders), set an extra place at the table and light candles to guide spirits home.

[IdblowJonSnow]

I think those thoughts, but then I think 'good'!
I find it comforting these days tbh. What's the alternative, living forever? Sod that.
Cheery thread!

[LoveFall]

Thank you Longtompot for sharing that. It is a wonderful song that says a lot.

[longtompot]

Made me think of this song

[User27aw]

@weechange

this thread is why religion was invented.

I agree. My oldest at around 4 or 5 was a sensitive child and I avoided telling him the truth about death for some reason, he assumed people lived forever, and I couldnt bear to tell him otherwise. One time he said something and I had to tell him the truth. Im not religious but I found myself telling him about a heaven type place to stop him being upset. I thought to myself that this is why we have religions.

[Crankley]

I read something a long time ago so don't remember all the details, but basically every breath that we take, contain ancient atoms so who knows? The next breath you take could contain an atom from Julius Caesar or Florence Nightingale or your great great great great grandmother. So some of your atoms will live on.

Can't remember where I read it and it may be rubbish but it's an interesting idea.