Do not fear death.

The HyWy and I were talking about a Thought of the Week she read recently, which among other things said, "do not fear death."  Interestingly we both had two very different interpretations of the thought.  Hers was more relevent to the thought as she had read the rest and had more context.  Mine was centered around the phrase, "do not fear death," itself and did not connect as much to the rest of the thought.

The HyWy thought that the reason we shouldn't fear death is because we don't know when it will occur.  In some sense death could be around the corner at any time.  When we wake up in the morning we don't know whether we will finish the day.  When we go to sleep at night we aren't guaranteed to wake up.  This isn't meant as downer though.  Rather it's meant as a way to live your life to the best of your abilities.  At the end of the day one should be able to look back on the day and think that they made the most of what the day was.  That doesn't mean that I can go to sleep thinking, "Shoot I didn't visit all the places I want to in my lifetime," because that isn't practical.  At the end of my day yesterday I went to bed knowing that while I might be unhappy in some areas of my life I was happy with all my interactions with people that day and there were no "outstanding debts" or unfinished business. 

My interpretation of the passage was that we as individuals do not know the full picture.  In our limited perspective birth is the beginning and death is the end.  However, we don't know whether there are other planes of existence which we will continue on to or from which we have come.  This life may just be temporary stop in a larger existence for my soul.  In the Christian belief structure there is Heaven (or Hell) and arguably those are the next planes of existence.  Similarly in the Hindu or to some extent Buddhist belief system the next existence is another physical form, but the soul moves forward.  So perhaps it isn't death that we fear, but just the unknown of what happens after that.  I don't believe that we simply cease to exist.