Back in the 16th century Montaigne wrote : " In life , we should have wife , children , goods , and above all health , if we can ; but we must not bind ourselves to them so strongly that our happiness totally depends on them . We must create a back space of our own , entirely free , in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude .
Here our ordinary conversation must be between us and ourselves , in private , here we must talk and laugh as if without wife , without children , without possessions , without company and entourage , so that , if and when time comes to lose them , it will be nothing new to us , and surely less dreadful to do without them ."
WE all need to learn and train ourselves , not to fear our nonexistence , death is easy , most likely one does not encounter death at all , for we are gone into nothingness before it fully gets there , or at best simultaneously . We die in the same way that we fall asleep , by drifting away .
IF one talks about death normally , even jokingly , and I am one to do that in many and most instances , if we run through the images of our own and others death scenes often enough , it could not catch us by surprise , preparing ourselves should free us somehow from " the death fear."
Imagining accidents and death scenes that might befall on us , our dear ones or our friends , can help us better accept such ideas in the abstract , and can calm us when facing realities .
Death is about the way it happens , and is only a few bad moments at the end of life . It is generally not worth wasting any anxiety over , or so apparently Montaigne believed .
My usual thanks to my readers for their patience with my fantasies .
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