Mortality

We must all face our mortality so that we may better evade it.
The terror of death is largely based upon the fear that something static, something called 'you' will be lost. I fact this thng we call 'us' is mainly illusion. Our perceptions, loves and hates, our view of the world and even our memories shift and change from moment to moment. This thing that we call 'us' that we so fear losing never was.
This leads to the irony by which people seek immortality by meas of self obliteration. The religious convert suppresses his self will, his desires and personal wishes in an act of submission to a greater immortal self that he calls God. In death he finds life and in slavery he finds freedom. In fact all that is happening is that he realises how small he is and he comes to realise that morning the passing of his own life is like a child crying over the melting of an ice cream. It is of little account really.
We often see the same in politics- particularly dangerios politics. The individual is prepared to sacrifice himself so that the ideology, the nation or the race may live.
More constructively we see the old taking a greater interest in the affairs of the young than in there own welbeing. Their dissapointments become dreams for their grandchildren. In this way they live on in their children even as their bodies fail them.
We all make this transition. The less selfish and egotistical our lives, the easier the transition will be. The arrogant, the selfish and the small minded are all punished for their shortcomings in their final days because there is nothing greater than them. They remain the center of their world until the end and die alone in a way that the more generious hearted person does not.