I’m hoping someone here can give me some advice. I’m turning 30 in about 6 months, and I’ve had a paralyzing fear of aging and death. Obviously 30 isn’t what I would call “old”. I’ve accomplished and done many of the things I’ve wanted to in my life thus far. I’m just afraid I’m going to wake up and I’ll be 60… Any advice on how to deal with this. I’m afraid life is going to go faster than I want it to, and time is just slipping through my fingers. I feel like I’m not able to slow down and enjoy the ride. I kinda feel like it wasn’t that long ago that I was smoking pot in my dorm room with my buddies, and now I’m going to be getting married soon.
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/u/lawabidingcitizen069
> I’m just afraid I’m going to wake up and I’ll be 60
Imagine how a 60 year old reading your comment will feel.
Unless you get murdered, get gravely ill,or get into a fatal accident you are going to grow old. You are going to visibly age, you will cease being attractive to women, people will stop seeing you as an individual – just some grey haired wrinkly schmuck that looks like every other elderly person. Your mental and physical capacities *will* diminish. No way around it.
in my experience the antidote to that feeling/fear is living life to the absolute fullest. what that looks like varies from person to person.
the last thing we want, i think what your post is saying between the lines, is to be on our death bed regretting what we didn’t do.
just because you’ll be married doesn’t mean you stop anything you enjoy, like your hobbies — that was a huge mistake i made, and thankfully since corrected.
we can always do more, always try harder, always give more selflessly of ourselves. get out there and make it happen 🙂
Keep your body functioning properly. Eat well and exercise. Challenge your brain. Face ageing on your own terms. It it’s any consolation, men tend to age pretty well if they take care of themselves.
There are things to look forward to as you age. Retirement is probably the biggest one. Studies show there are a number of others, just Google it idk. As for getting over your fear of death, good fucking luck lmfao
You don’t
By realizing it’s inevitable.
Probably a mixture of high doses of psychedelics and witnessing my father die of cancer (not both at the same time of course).
If you live to see your parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends die, you will be **lucky** in a way. We only get one ticket to this roller coaster, and you’ll disintegrate into infinity at some point along the way. We are **blessed** for the time we have here. Death happens, and life continues.
My Dad is 74 and does 100+ mile bike rides. Just got back from a South African safari. And has all sorts of hobbies, both active & sedentary.
As for death…it could be 60 years from now for you or tomorrow. Just accept that your time will come, as it does for every living organism. Work to improve your little corner of the Earth so you can feel good when it does. Like the Mom in Forrest Gump.
Oh and if you’re planning to have kids after marriage, load up now on as much life insurance as you can afford. If you do kick the bucket, it’ll be a good feeling know they’ll all be taken care of.
Like everyone said, live the fucking hell out of your life. Once you internalize and accept that death is part of life, you realize that this is your only chance to do whatever makes you happy. Find hobbies you can pour passion into. Make as much time for your closest loved ones as you can. Find someone who completes you. Find ways to put yourself at service to others to help others. One other thing that helps is the usual not worrying about the future. The future hasn’t happened and your expectations of what could happen hasn’t happened, so why allow yourself to be in a state of stress and worry about it. Just be present.
My fear of death came from experience the first death in our family when I was a kid and not gonna lie, but the movie Armageddon/Deep Impact really scared the hell out of me as kid. Throughout my teens and college days, I was too busy being a young guy to worry about anything else. But when I hit my lowest point around 29-30, along with everything else I was fighting at the time, the fear of death set back in. After therapy and internalizing that fear of death, I decided to make a change and really improved my life. 36 now and life has never been better and without trying to worry about the future too much, I can see life continuing to get better.
Stay healthy so you don’t die slow and drawn but either way it’s coming so might as well to over concern yourself. If something external kills you then that’s out of your control anyway.
Existential fear is something we all have to deal with. It’s terrifying for many of us. The way I have gotten past it is to accept that all I can do is try to treat others like I would want myself to be treated, and take care of my mind and body for as long as I can.
If there is an afterlife, ultimately we don’t have control over it and we will find out after we die. If there’s not, we’ll never know. For some reason, your soul if it exists was chosen to exist in your body at this point in history. In the grand symphony of the universe, that is the card you have drawn.
So try to take comfort in the fact that the universe is not under your control, neither is what happens after you die, but there are things you can control and if you have discipline and positive habits, you might live to be pretty old.
I can tell you that time will certainly move faster as you age. So expect that.
Fear of death, or that your life will end, is not a function of you ‘not having done or experienced enough’. At least it wasn’t for me. For me, I thought long and hard on what was it that made me fear it, really. And what I landed on was that I would no longer exist. So the next question was, how do I keep that from happening? Which at first glance seems like a ludicrous proposition to be able to stop what seems inevitable.
But I reframed the question, in what ways can I CONTINUE to exist after I’m gone. And humanity already had an answer to that. Genetically I can live on thru my children. Philosophically/Spiritually again I can live on thru the children, but also thru my work. The more impactful my community contribution, the longer I would live on. In other words, thru legacy. Examples include writing a book. Building a company that outlives me. That sort of thing.
This younger generation is so concerned with the experiences of the now, which is still important, but in my opinion, perhaps at the expense of something deeper and more profound. Perhaps this is the reason for the pandemic of ‘existential dread’ so many young people are claiming to suffer from.
But here’s another thought. In order to be able leave a legacy worth passing down past my lifetime, I need to have experiences that build wisdom. For example, I need to pass on lessons that I learned in my lifetime to my children. I need to write books that encapsulate my unique experiences. I need to build a company with a purpose of real service to the community earned thru insight of what’s needed. So you need both experienced of the now, but the work to pass on the wisdom past my lifetime.
>I’m turning 30 in about 6 months, and I’ve had a paralyzing fear of aging and death.
Understand the alternatives of living to a ripe or age are much much worse.
**Dying young** – lots of folks avoid aging to 60 by dying in their 20s and 30s. They avoid their 60s at the cost of missing out on most of life.
**Living forever** – Immortality sounds cool until you think it through. If its only you that’s immortal, you get to watch every single person you know and love die while you keep on going this includes your wife and children. You get to watch humanity keep making the same mistakes again and again over the course of thousands of years. How about if this version of immortality doesn’t mean you stop deteriorating. You keep living long after your body has failed you unable to die, but trapped in your broken body as your mind goes mad.
No thanks to either of those. A 75 to 100 year old life sounds pretty damn good to me.
Accept it’s inevitability. Literally nothing you can do about it, so why fear it? Use your time more wisely.
LSD & Shrooms.
Go on a psychedelics journey.
Think about how strange it is just to be alive at all. The experience of life IS aging, and slowly approaching death, whatever that means. Growing old and being able to witness others doing the same and being able to see how the world has changed as you have made your way through it is such a magical exciting thing.
Understand that everyone is going through the same thing; fear of death and aging and most of life is built around distracting ourselves from these thoughts. There is so much escapism, but if you choose to embrace these existential thoughts and ponder the mystery that is life and pursue experience and EMOTION, you will live a fulfilled life.
I know this is a lot of rambling, but, trust me. If you pursue the truth; about yourself and all of your fears and desires, you will find your peace with death. My journey has brought me to a place where I am thrilled by the mystery of death, and while still fearful that it won’t be what I want, I am excited for the fact that I will one day die, after having lived and experienced my life.
I made sure to live a life worth living twice, once as I’m currently experiencing it and another when I’m old and looking back on with fond memories. A large portion of us will make it to be old grey and wrinkly, but make sure you earned those grey hairs ( or bald head) and wrinkles by having lived the best life you could and ride off into the sunset proud of what you accomplished.
I work out a lot and I refuse to die.
Death, as we know is inevitable. I’m not sure any one of us can give anybody true advice or wisdom we don’t already know ourselves. Many guys on here are giving great advice in keeping yourself healthy to prolong health. But death, even to the healthiest still looms. So as I knock on the door of 50, I can say live in love. Surround yourself with people who value you and bring value to your life. Once I removed the toxicity of those who weren’t imperative to my life I felt great. If toxic people have to remain due to familial ties, I lessen their influence in my life and lessen the weight of their relevance. Professionally, find what you love. If that’s not possible, find a career that makes it possible to support your family admirably. Marry well and marry wisely. She won’t be perfect, but if she makes you smile, if looking at her makes you smile, if you see the mother of your children, all the while supporting you as you support her in her career. She’s the one. This is just old man wisdom. Be well OP. Find and keep that happiness as you approach middle age.
I used to be afraid and frankliy terrified of death and dying when I was a teen/early 20s. Now I’m 41 and not really scared of it, more scared of other people dying in my life, honestly.
The fear of dying without having lived. Because of this, my will to live overshadows by far the fear of dying.
Make a list of everything you want to do by the time you’re 60 and then spend the next 30 years crossing items off said list. Then when you hit 60 you won’t feel like you let time slip by because you haven’t, you were busy doing stuff on your list.
I had a friend who lived to be 106 who said this any time someone asked her what the secret to long life was: “I don’t know but I plan on sticking around until I find out!”
I didn’t I just ignore it.
If my brain tries to make me think about death I just say no…and think about something else. It works eventually.