why fear death?

For me when I think about death, fear isn't really so much the first emotion that visits me. Honestly it is more of sadness. Sadness for one main reason: life as I have known it, as Greer Van Dyck will be no more. Now this isn't to say that I am afraid of this fact, because I feel as though fearing an inevitability is wasted energy.

But I know that the fear of death is something that many people struggle with. People close to me in life are always talking about how they are afraid of death. But it makes me wonder: are they afraid of the process of dying, or the actual fact that their life as they know it is ending? For me, I would only assume that it is a combination of the two. I'm sure that fear of a painful or slow death is absolutely a common source of anxiety, paired along with the fact that the time after death is completely unknown.

And then there is where it is centered: fear of the unknown. Because we don't know EXACTLY how our cards are going to fall, we are afraid. I feel as though in many facets of life, we must know all details, have all of the information. But here we can't have it, so what do we do? We fear it. And we fear all that stands at death's feet.

I was doing some reading in preparation for my graduate program, jeez school hasn't even started and already there's homework, but there was a paragraph on the topic that part of the reasons we may fear death so much is because we see death as a complete separation from the earth. We are traveling millions of miles away when we die and being taken further and further from the things and people we love. But consider this, instead of approaching death as a definite separation, see it as a new connection with the earth. If you think about it, we really are becoming closer to the earth, so where is this premonition that we are being abducted in a sense?

For suddenly, when death is seen as more of a connection than a separation from familiarity and comfort, I am less afraid and less sad. It isn't a day that I fear now, but am more perplexed by and fascinated with.

Lesson: Death, like everyday we spend on this earth, is unknown. You have no idea where the rise and fall of the sun is going to lead you, who you are going meet along the way, and what you are going to learn. Yet we don't fear the day. Why? See death as a dawning of a new day, not the end of one.