Consider the scenario in which you have just received some really unpleasant news. You don't have much longer to live, perhaps just a few of years, and there's nothing anyone–not you, nor your doctor–can do to prolong your life any further.
Welcome to the routine of a very elderly person's day-to-day existence. We spend our entire lives anticipating death, and then, all of a sudden, it's upon us without warning. This should be a source of horror or at the very least grief for any senior with any sense. However, for many people–not all, but many–it might have the opposite effect.
Scientists have long been perplexed by how so many elderly individuals perform the psychological jujitsu of being satisfied with what their short-term future holds. In the opinion of Thomas Pyszczynski, a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, "you'd expect people would become more worried as they become older." However, according to the research, older adults experience less worry and depression, as well as more overall happiness, he explains.
It was originally suggested by Otto Rank, a Viennese psychologist and former student of Sigmund Freud, that the secret to not being afraid of death rested in the "voluntary acceptance of the compulsory." How? It has been shown in studies that when we come to realize that what we've always thought of as ownership is really simply a long-term lease, we might experience a significant shift in perspective later in life. Out of Darkness author Steve Taylor explains that a large part of our fear of death stems from the prospect of losing the things we've accumulated. Taylor is a lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University in Leeds, England, and is the author of Out of Darkness. "However, as kids get older, they learn to let go of their connection to these objects, and in doing so, they learn to let go of part of their anxiety."
It might also be beneficial to consider oneself as a member of something that will survive you. The children they've raised or the gardens they've planted are examples of how some people locate their legacy. Others place a higher priority on family, religion, and country–the tribal organizations that will continue to exist when we are gone.
However, not everyone achieves this level of peace in their latter years. Some people become "bitterly disenfranchised," according to Sheldon Solomon, a professor of social psychology at Skidmore College, and are dissatisfied with their lives as a result of the years that have passed. In their minds, they'd like to be Elvis Presley or Lady Gaga if they could live their lives over again. The ones who are most afraid of death are those who are most afraid of life."
Death, even for the most sublime among us, will never be something that can be looked forward to with delight. It may be thought of as life's grand punch line–an annihilation of the self at a point in time when that self has become wiser and better than it has been in the previous moments. But, if we hadn't been aware of the impending conclusion, we might not have reached such a lofty and sublime condition in the first place. The certainty of a journey's conclusion may encourage us all to be better travelers.
