Staring at the Sun

there is a huge difference between knowing about something and knowing it through your own experience.

Because we cannot live frozen in fear, we generate methods to soften death’s terror. We project ourselves into the future through our children; we grow rich, famous, ever larger; we develop compulsive protective rituals; or we embrace an im-pregnable belief in an ultimate rescuer.

What terrifies most about death is not the loss of the future but the loss of the past. In fact, the act of forgetting is a form of death always present within life.”

The central thesis of this chapter is: though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death saves us.

understanding the factors that make clients feel better is as important as understanding those that make them feel worse

I still have time for another career. I’d hate to grow old and look back and realize I never even tried to do anything else.”

the observer always influences what is observed

Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude

In other words, the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.

Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.