The Ultimate Unkown - Death

I feel a little confused and a little complicated. I'm not exactly sure how to explain it. It's a feeling of being free and happy while being on the verge of extreme depression. I don't particularly understand why I'm not depressed. Maybe it's sad to say, but it's true to say that based on what I know of myself, I should be in some form of depression right now. What's weird is, I'm not. Maybe I can attribute it to the Lexapro, I'm sure it plays a part but I can also say that I'm spending a strong portion of my time on activities that give me strength and happiness. Maybe feeling like I should be depressed is a relic. Maybe the work I've been doing for the past few years is finally paying off in a big way. In a way I feel proud that I seem to have set myself up for success when it comes to dealing with serious life events. Of course, I'm not perfect. Much of what I do to cope is unhealthy but I've accepted that life is process of learning and unlearning. I can see the light, I can visualize myself being the person I want to be. To get there I'll have to work hard. I was already very intrigued by confusion of self, and I had taken steps to answer the questions I had feared to ask myself but I still have much room to grow in my mind. I have very much fallen into philosophy lately. I'm not really restricting myself for anything but good moral judgment. A summary of my thoughts lately could be: there is really only one way to understand someone, from the words that come from the depths of their mind. I was tempted to say soul there but figured mind was more accurate and affiliated with reality. I don't see a way in which I could dislike or despise life. It seems counterintuitive. Unless your goal is to die, which it is the goal of nobody. 

It's funny that you can almost compare how religious people see their deity and how some philosophers view death. I heard this said the same but with "truth" instead of death. I thought death was a little more interesting. Why don't we kill ourselves? Why do we fear death? Assuming we subscribe to the belief that things we do not understand should not be feared because everything is something we don't understand until we understand it, and the majority, if not all, of these things add to our character and our potential to grow and change, then death should not be feared on the basis of it not being understood. I took a few leaps there but this is the belief that I subscribe to. So you might say, "Well, death is feared because it IS understood." Maybe, but truthfully, there is nothing we can truly know. However much you believe that death is the end, that is not something you can know unless you experience it. So, the fear comes in experiencing it. My inclination is to say that the fear is based on the common belief that people fear the unkown. Well, do people fear the unkown or do people fear the expectations and imagery that run through their head? In which case people fear themselves. This isn't specific enough. What does it mean to scared of yourself? You're scared of the possibilities of what you could do. You're scared of the thought of killing yourself because you know you can do it. You know that if something goes wrong, as it has for many, it is possible for any one of us to get to the point where we feel hopeless and make the decision to end our lives. I think about this sometimes. I am determined to never get to that point but this feels like an avoidance of the topic. Any single one of us could kill ourselves for any number of reasons. Why don't we? Why complain and complain and complain about life and live in misery to avoid death? This tells me there is nothing scarier than death. Anything else, you know there's always tomorrow. Even if you aren't looking forward to tomorrow, death would not be preferable. So why don't we kill ourselves? We hope, so strongly that it borders belief, that we'll never become hopeless. Why do we kill ourselves? We hope, so strongly that it borders on belief, that we can end the hopelessness. So does the reason for human life come down to hope? If we live for the sake of our futures, and the excitements of the future, then we are living on hope that we will enjoy something. Even if somebody believes they are "hopeless," to lose all hope on one thing is to change and look to the opposite of said thing. If you continue to look at the original thing, you are not hopeless. Maybe I'm severely underestimating the impact depression has on people. Can we live with hopelessness? It isn't necessarily true that to be hopeless is to actively look for an opposite in order to find a renewed hope. Perhaps we can be so hopeless that we believe even the opposite of life is hopeless. Or, perhaps, we view death as a part of life, in it's inevitability, and decide that there is no difference between life and death. What keeps us alive could be the hope that life and death are different. To love life to it's fullest, is to be ready to say goodbye when it is time, and to live based on the belief that death is the end. To believe there is life after death in which we are judged by the characteristics of our life, is to live based on our eventual death. It seems easiest to face death by looking at life through a realistic lens. What we can say is that we will grow and change and die. To love growing and changing, and eventually death, is to love life, which we are. To love life is to love yourself. It's hard for me to imagine that it is any more complicated than this, but I'm sure I didn't just come up with the defining self-help philosophy, so unfortunately, my knowledge ends. I am struggling to critique myself likely because I came up with a very uplifting and convincing argument as to why life should be loved. Is it possible that this gives me a feeling of comfort, so I choose to subscribe to it? Part of me does not want to critique my work because I imagine I'll find many things wrong with it or I fear I'll become doubtful of work that I shouldn't doubt. Also, not entirely sure why I described this as work. It felt, in a way, like I was working toward something, but I don't feel nearly qualified enough to consider this any sort of intelligible philosophy. Which is what a humble person would say. Oh now I've gone and confused myself. How much does my desire influence my thought? I might think of myself as an individual more often than I should. To think of myself as a being independent from the rest of creation makes me lose my ground. I have no understanding of anything and anything is possible. Of course, this is true. It is true for us all, though. It is both easier and more difficult to talk in terms of the entire human race. There's more pressure there. It seems too vague, almost. I'm not sure how much you can gauge about every single human being based on the knowledge we are given. There's a limit to everything, and to me it makes more sense to look at things through the perspective of each individual. In other words, it is up to each individual to look within and understand that which is felt and believed. Proper discourse can aid in understanding but too often we have conversations where we are indirect, confusing, and shallow. This is a defense mechanism against the fears of the social world which, compared to my belief of death, are absolutely nothing. (And since I will die some day, it will help to work up to the fear by experiencing other extreme fears in which I will not die.) It is time we let these defense mechanisms go. They are no longer serving us, as individuals. Instead, we should work hard to understand what we are in order to eventually be ready to accept death. The ultimate unkown.