I am terrified of dying, and I don't know why. In geologic time my lifespan is insignificant. In cosmic time my lifespan isn't even worth mentioning. Having any strong feelings regarding being dead or alive is pure comic hubris.
I have no anxiety considering the vast span of time before I existed, so why should I be so bothered about any of the vast span of time after I stop existing? Indeed, the span of time where there will be any evidence that I had ever existed will also be insignificant.
I seem obsessed with a desire for an open-ended continuity for my consciousness, the thing that I perceive to be "me", despite having done so little to make anything of my existence in the time I have had.
This obsession is puzzling because I experience discontinuity of my consciousness for a number of hours every day. What else is dreamless sleep but a discontinuity in my consciousness, in my awareness of this "me" thing.
I would be lying if I said these daily discontinuities don't bother me. For most of my life I have been terrified of sleep because I can never be certain that I will wake up. Ceasing to exist without even being aware of it happening is terrifying to me.
The funny thing is, once I return to the the previous, arguably normative, state of non-existence, I will be no more aware of it than I was before I began to exist. It can't possibly hurt or be frightening when I am not happening to be.
Life is pain and fear and very short, especially at the end, so why do I want it to persist?
Some may attribute this desire to something like an evolutionary imperative. But I have already done all that evolution demands of me. I have reproduced. I have fumbled my way through parenting well enough that they are independent adults now. There is even one specimen of an additional generation. Why would evolution allow me to persist, to consume resources, when I am done with what it requires of me? Why would it produce a consciousness that wishes to persist with no purpose? Why was this comical fate thrust upon the minds of billions of forgotten lives, and billions more to come?
Generally, humanity has replaced God with Evolution, but neither provides satisfactory answers to many of the questions we regard as personally most important. At least both agree that each of us are individually unimportant, and it is futile folly to pretend otherwise. It isn't the answer I want, but it is an answer I can believe.
Once more, given possible implications of what I have written here, this is not a suicide note nor an encouragement for anyone to consider willfully shortening their existence. Most observant readers would find this to be very much in opposition to such ideas.
Why am I about to post this to my blog?