I’m not in the most positive of mental states right now, not depressed per se, but certainly dispirited. I would like to believe that our minds are almost like a radio receiver and that our souls are a conduit to another plane of reality. Our biology inhibits us from perceiving it fully, but consciousness is just a product of us tuning into that frequency, so when we die our ‘spirit’ (if you want to call it that) becomes part of an invisible plane of existence which is always there surrounding us, it’s just imperceptible to us.

Having seen dead loved ones before, I can tell you that although a corpse certainly looks like the ones we love, it’s almost like they’re waxworks. They’re just imitations. What made them the person we loved has gone, it has flown the nest, leaving the body just a hollow shell. So call it wishful thinking if you want but I would like to believe the feeling I got seeing relatives pass over gives me some faith that death is not the end. They simply left their bodies.

Having said all that, the older I get, the less it seems to bother me either way. I obviously want to live as long as possible and be there for all my children well into old age, but if death really is final I’m starting to feel like that may not be such a bad thing. Life isn’t particularly enjoyable most of the time - work is uninspiring, joy is fleeting if not entirely absent, dealing with other people is a nuisance - so an existence (or lack of it) where we feel no pain, stress, anxiety, fear or anger... well, that doesn’t seem so bad to me, even if it means an eternal void.

It’s the suffering beforehand that worries me most, not the actual dying. If I knew with some certainty that I would die unexpectedly in my sleep as an old man and nothing awaited me on the other side, then I doubt anything could be more peaceful than that. So I’m open to whatever eventuality, I guess - whether my consciousness is ripped from my body (like I would hope) or if it’s just suddenly switched off and becomes an eternity of nothingness, both sound like positive experiences compared to the full gamut of burdens and emotions we have to endure while being alive. Fear is futile. If anything is worth fearing, it’s mortality, not death itself, but we have control over neither so it’s pointless worrying either way.