If Alex hadn't said it, I would've done.

Mark

Death, yup thought about it alot. Part of me's quite excited, I'll get to see what happens or just get a good kip for once.

I've been in three situations in my life where being dead was a real possibility so I've kind of been through all that already. I've also already been to far too many funerals for someone my age. Death? You'll meet him eventually; all you can do is to make the absolute best of things until he turns up.

To quote a song "I'm still alive. I can't apologise."

Having lost a large proportion of my family (only living direct relation is my brother), I have thought about death a lot.

I'm not religious, I don't believe there is necessarily a god, but I don't discount it totally either. But it doesn't bother me either way, I'll find out one day.

Death doesn't really bother me, it will come some time. I just hope I have long enough to enjoy my life and bring hapiness to those around me. If I can make those around me happy, then my life wasn't in vain and I can die contented.

I've been under a general anaesthetic four times now.

What can I say? It comes over you very quickly, and then you wake up. Some time later. The worst thing was vomiting after coming round, so the next time I mentioned it to the anaesthetist who added something to the concoction to prevent it.

I've begun to realise I won't be here for ever. I think it's something that hits you as you get older. It's probably what other people call a mid-life crisis: you suddenly become aware you're no longer young, perhaps the best parts of your life have passed, and you are on the decline. I've realised there are some things that I wanted to do I will probably never accomplish now, and that makes me sad. Then I realise there's a lot of things I can still do with my life.

I think your own mortality starts to hit you when people you've known die, like friends or family. The death of someone you've known well can be a sobering experience. All I can hope for is when my time comes, it's painless and in my sleep.

I suffer depression - not as bad as some of us here, it's true - and thankfully I've never actually been suicidal in my lowest points. But, I've been there where there doesn't seem to be any point to anything any more. That's scary, teetering on the edge, wondering whether you're going to tip over into something much, much worse...

Now, you see, I awoke earlier feeling fairly happy. Now I'm all sad.

*heads for the chocolate*

Wow, this is a rather deep thread to stumble into second thing (FPOTD) on a Saturday morning.

Have I thought about death? Yes, I suppose I have.
We lost my eldest cousin a few years ago to a blood clot on her lung and it hit everyone in the family like a hammer. It was so different from losing grandparents. They had all had a full life and brought joy and happiness to us all. Most importantly of all, they went surrounded by their family and were not alone.
With my cousin it was different. She collapsed at work and by the time they got her to the hospital she was gone.

Is there something afterwards? I think there is. Whether it's anything we can comprehend in this life is a different matter.
A few months ago I was apparently thinking along those lines and wrote my thoughts down, the first one is currently in my sig but here we go anyway:

From darkness we came
To darkness we shall return
But for however brief a time
We burn with passion and fire
Enough to eclipse a thousand suns

We do not fear the darkness
For without the long night
Our star could not shine

And when our time is come
Our fire reduced to a faint echo
We shall walk into the moonlit forest of the soul
And find those we love who have gone before
And wait to embrace those who follow after us

No one who has known love is ever truly alone
We take the love we have felt with us
To the forest, to the mountain,
To the City, to the sea
Never truly alone no matter how far
We may be from those whom we love

It's cr@p and I have no idea what triggered it but I had to write it down. I guess it crystallised my current views on life and death.

If there is a DEATH (as in the bony fella with the scythe) then I hope he (or indeed she) is like the DEATH of the Discworld. Kind of on our side, there to bring us to the next place without malice or prejudice and riding a great white horse called Binky.

I just hope that when my time come it's a massive surprise or that I don't even notice at the time. That's the main reason I think that under certain circumstances that euthenasia should be legal.

If there is a Death, I hope it's like the cute young woman incarnation from Neil Gaiman's Sandman.
One day every century, Death lives (and dies) as a mortal, in order to understand the value of the life she takes.

Mark

Well, we all go on in some form or another, energy doesn't disappear. We could be anything from being in a future star to forming some constituent part of a frog's crap.

I'd rather not be sentient if I happen to be in the latter.

I meant that sentence as a piss take, depression is a horrible thing and is one of the worlds biggest mental health problems that affects a lot of people. the best thing you can do about it however is too look back and think how silly it is, its the only way to get over going it without on drugs and what not to get over it.

on another sort of side note, how many people have taken philosophy, as there are many theories regarding death, and life and the meaning of it all.

I have. It's a bunch of pseudo-scientific nonsense with ideas way above it's station.
You can probably tell from that description that I and it didn't really get along.

Mark

Serious philosophers tend to be people who spend a lot of time looking at their shoes, interspersed with time spent reading about people who looked at their shoes in a variety of different ways...

Philosophy is boring and ineffective unless it is sharply focussed and combined with scientific methods, if it's just words then it's just intellectual masturbation IMO.

+1000 Must be careful I have a friend who is a professor of Philosophy.

About 13 or so years ago, I was ill. It wasn't life threatening - but it felt it, and I really thug I wasn't going to come out of it alive. There are times even today when I am surprised I am still here. The notion of death passed around my kind a lot at the time - and even though I hated the idea, I think I was more scared of the process of dying than of the actual state.

Today, like the OP, I know that one day I will cease to be, and depending on my state of mind, it's a chilling idea. However, as I have no religious beliefs, I am not looking forward to some form of eternal bliss is some heavenly kingdom. I honestly have no idea what will happen to me when I do eventually die. This "thing" that does the experiencing, the smelling, tasting, seeing, thinking, creating inside the body is something I can not define. Noone can define it - and as such it has become to be "the soul" - but to me that's also too easy a conclusion to arrive at, because it's comfortIng and easy to digest. I get the feeling that things just cease to be.

The illness was first defined by my doctor as "post viral syndrome" and then later as "chronic fatigue syndrome" - some medics lump that in with ME. The reality is that it was devastatingly tiring and it really, really felt as if the body was failing bug time. I feel much better now than I did then, but the thoughts from that time remain with me.

Waking up feeling like you've already run a marathon with a three day hangover, the flu, and a 50kg rucksack on your back isn't the best of starts to a day is it Paul.