Part of our fear of death is the idea of being forgotten.

We try to build meaningful lives so something of us stays behind.

Most people won’t be widely remembered, but they still shape the world.

Our lives are structured to pursue meaning, even if we don’t consciously think about it that way. We make goals and align our interests, passions, and strengths with impactful paths. We worry about whether our efforts are recognized and whether our time is being spent well. Who are we? Do we matter? Are we able to distinguish ourselves from the 8-plus billion others on this planet?

Cultivating purpose takes work and patience; sometimes it sustains us, and other times it’s burdensome. Still, we labor on because stopping feels unsettling—like we’d leave something essential unfinished.

At the same time, we fear death. Not always in a way that’s at the forefront of our minds, but in a way that’s on the back burner, through avoidance. We don’t like to talk about it, linger on it, or let it interfere too much with the way we organize our lives. We know, abstractly, that we will die, but we treat that awareness as something to be acknowledged briefly and then set aside (if and when possible), so it doesn’t destabilize the structures we rely on to keep going. We avoid “D” words like death, dying, and dead in favor of more palatable substitutes like “passed away” and “in a better place.”

What’s not always on our radar is just how closely these seemingly opposite ends of the spectrum are linked. Our drive to live fully and our fear of death are not separate terrains, but more like the yin and yang of the same piece of property. We pursue........

© Psychology Today