Ask HN: How do you deal with your mortality?

I am well aware that with the state of the world and the winter’s short days are clearly affecting my reactions to these thoughts. I know that and am taking steps to try to fix my brain chemistry. I have an appointment with my primary care coming up where I plan to discuss changes to my medications that might help make me not panic. But ultimately I am not after simply being calm as I get older and closer to death. The idea that I can just pop some pills and be less afraid of the only thing I as a consciousness should be afraid of is the opposite of comforting. Nevertheless, I realize the first step is to get my head on straight and emotions in check.

Things I have tried to at least slow down the panic:

Talked to my therapist. Her advice was to try to distract myself until coping mechanisms come back and help me protect myself from whatever is triggering me. All true but doesn’t change the fundamental facts. I don’t want to think of this stuff with more clinical detachment. I want to think of it with hope bordering on certainty.

Tried various anti-anxiety medications. This helps temporarily but same as above: doesn’t change fundamental facts. As I said above, going to try to adjust them again with my doctor to try to dial them in better for short term comfort.

Tried distractions like talking to friends and family. This is a mixed bag. When I look at my children I see the intrusive thoughts flash across my mind about their mortality and how I am powerless to change it. With friends it can often take my mind off things for a bit but they aren’t sitting by my bedside telling me distracting stories as I fall asleep the way my mother did when I was 4.

Talking to my partner. They are not nearly as afraid of death and think of it as very much a part of life. They are supportive but I think me explaining my reasons for being suddenly terrified like this take a lot out of them and I don’t want to make this their problem. When I need concrete things they are 100% there but I don’t want to offload this problem on them as they will take it on and if they can’t succeed will likely fall into the same situation while trying.

In distant past I have flirted with spiritualism and religion. My rational mind cannot accept a system that requires blind belief or that has some obvious logical flaws. And besides if I really am just getting a short 60-90 years to exist I don’t want to spend them worshipping something, be it a bearded man in the sky or some eternal light.

Briefly looked into brain upload/brain replacement. This brought me 48 hours of comfort. Some people believe the singularity is coming and that as early as 2045 we might have brain upload technology. This was almost what I want to latch onto as my mental life boat, but in the end these predictions sound a lot like predictions in the 1970s about cold fusion and AI: off by decades or centuries. Besides, who is to say that it would actually work correctly and not just create another copy that thinks it is me but I am not the one seeing through my optic nerves, so to speak. Or that if it’s available that it would be available to me? Or that it would allow me to be even a little bit human afterwards and not some beige box in my grand kids’ basement server rack?

Think about if there is anything I can do. I am not an unintelligent person; is there something I can contribute? Or do I really want to devote my life to pursuing something that five centuries from now will be a footnote in some college textbook? Or do I pursue things like status and monetary gain to be able to buy my and my family’s way into whatever brain upload type solution we as a species might find? Or do I accumulate wealth and invest it into this kind of research? Or medical life extension for myself and my loved ones until such time that a-mortality (if not immortality) is an option.

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I am asking this on HN because this to me is the most accessible community of people who are very smart and a lot are much smarter and more educated than me. It’s like I am hoping to get into a debate with someone where I argue about why death is inevitable, and then lose handily to someone who can show me why I should have hope because concrete solutions are coming. Solutions that aren’t religious or other forms of make-belief, overly-sentimental in the vein of people living on in others’ hearts, or unrealistic from a physics standpoint, or would only be available to the ultra rich/powerful/people deemed worthy. Any help or advice is appreciated. Any questions, happy to answer.

P.S.: I am sorry if this triggers anyone else. This isn’t a good time of year or a good year for this.

P.P.S.: say we manage to upload brains into new bodies with preserving the self and make the process perfect (no accidents at the body factory, no power outages during the procedure), AND solve the resource/environment problem of humans never dying, and manage long distance space travel. Won’t heat death of the universe be our final stop anyways? Or do we get to break out and keep going? What good is it to live a trillion trillion years just to freeze to death while starving?

Acceptance. No point worrying over something that will happen no matter what I do, or how much I worry about it. I just hope to die suddenly and unexpectedly, as Julius Caesar supposedly said. Odd, but the older I get the less afraid I feel about dying. I’m 60 now, don’t give it much thought other than thinking about how it might affect my wife and kids.

An eternity elapsed before I was born, and the universe will go on for an eternity after I die. Keep it in perspective.

This may sound weird, but try to watch and read less NEWS. Also sometimes when you feel this way, your brain trying to tell you something - useally something about your health. So make sure you visit a doctor or at very least talk to one on video chat. And I agree with others here, no point in worrying over something you have no control over. And finally find something that will help you forget about this. Like reading, watching something, working etc. Hope it helps! (EDIT) This is just a tought, but sometimes living in a partical place can cause this too. Especially if you are sensative emotionally and have health problems. Hunted house comes to mind...

I have thought about whether this is my body telling me something. That’s why, as I put in my large comment, I have an appointment with my primary care next week. I have cut out news about two months ago, but I get triggered by a lot of different things: video games, books I’m reading, conversations with people I like, etc. The biggest thing though: it all feels like lying to myself that it will be ok and knowing that it won’t. It will happen and I don’t want it to.

You describe perfectly the experience I had at one point many years ago. I don’t want to experience every cubic meter of the universe. And I lived my life for at least the past decade with the idea that I will chart my own path of what I want to experience and largely succeeded so far.

But what I am after is fundamentally different than experiencing the whole universe as individual pieces. It’s more that I don’t want to be limited. I don’t want to go away because that takes away my choice. If I die at 90, I don’t get to see my great grandkids get married at 120. If I die at 120 I don’t get to fall in love at 150. That’s my problem. I don’t want to become the universe. I want to remain human or as close to it as possible and for death to not be an eventuality forced upon me.

My dog is sentient. But she does not contemplate her end. I am cursed with it and it feels like the only way to beat it is to not die.