Kafka explains where our fear of death comes from
The knowledge of one's own mortality is the biggest difference between humans and all other living beings. Each of us knows that one day there will be no more new days for us. But what attitude should we take towards death? Should we hide in order to postpone the inevitable a little bit? Or should we live a life that is worth living, even if it is a few years shorter?
Kafka says in this quote that the fear of dying rests because we have not yet lived. But what does it mean not to have lived? The answer to this question is a little different for each individual. All in all, however, one can say that there is an intersection of characteristics that define a "not lived".
Examples of this would be not chasing any of your dreams, not transforming the life you are given into the life you deem worth living. We are told at a young age how well you will do once you get out of kindergarten and into school. From elementary school then into a secondary school. Until finally we sit in a job we do to live a comfortable life. You can find more problems of the modern "way of life" in this article.
There's nothing wrong with going to school or having a good job. It's just important that we don't forget to enjoy everything around it. When you get up every day and think to yourself "again the same day with a different date, everything seems so gray and boring" so you can be sure that you are not living properly at the moment.
Life is not about getting to the end as safely as possible, slipping into the last shirt with as much money in your pockets as possible. It's about constantly rediscovering yourself, seeing what you're capable of, setting goals, failing, winning, loving and laughing.
A good life is not automatically a happy one. The pursuit of never-ending happiness can cause more suffering than one might think. Because everything that exists is in permanent change. From the Big Bang until now and even in the distant future, the only constant of life will be change.
Unfortunately, it's not that easy to find something you want out of life. It takes a lot of self-reflection and an almost exhausting honesty with yourself, but it will be worth it. Later, when you're older, you'll wish you'd listened more to your heart, that you'd devoted more time to the beautiful things in life - there are now results of countless studies in which people were asked at their deathbed what they regretted, which confirm exactly that. A really fulfilled life is not found in open-plan offices, in traffic jams on the way to work or in trivial meetings. (Whereby it is a good exercise to find fulfillment in these things as well.).
A good life is found in falling down ten times and still getting up again and again. It lies in appreciating what you have: the time you have with family and friends, or the time you have with yourself.
It is not easy to find things that make life worth living. But isn't it much harder to live with the reproach of never having tried? After all, life is not a journey with an end point to reach. It's like a song, it's about enjoying it while it lasts and not getting anxious for the end (by the way, this statement comes from Alan Watts, if you want to read the article about this click here). here).
If you often think about death and these thoughts give you an uneasy feeling, try to get a little more life into your everyday life. After all, it's worse to die if you've never lived than to close your eyes after a full life and move on to the next great adventure.