I've Been Thinking About Death
And what nothing means
In October 2025, I rode the back of an ambulance for the first time in my life.
Unable to sleep due to short breath, my heart beat strong enough to temper metal. Although embarrassed, I called the emergency line. In minutes, I was inside an ambulance with nothing but my indoor shirt and pants.
After awkwardly explaining myself with “心臓のドンドンは想い。 止まらない” roughly translating to “Heartbeat is heavy. Won’t stop.” I was driven to a hospital 5 minutes away from me.
Luckily, after extensive tests and a 24-hour Holter monitor, the cardiologist left me with the reassurance that nothing was wrong physically. Mentally, I think I realized for the first time I was mortal.
I mean, duh. Of course, we are mortals.
All things must meet their death. Regardless of how many cryo pods or billionaire investments, passing away is irrefutable. It’s just…I never personally felt like I was capable of that.
As kids and teens, we seldom consider our mortality. We have a whole life ahead of us (we still do), so it is hard to believe it can come to us specifically. As our cells continue to break down and regenerate, so too does our awareness of time and its passage, of us and our expiration.
To some, existentialism gives them nightmares that jolt them awake. To others, it is akin to a peaceful slumber to rosy-fingered dawn. I have been thinking a lot about death, and I want to talk about it.
What’s Scarier than Death
Eternity
Hypocritically, the thing that is scarier than death is immortality. I imagine a life where you cannot die to be mind-breaking. It’s as if we know that our thumbprint on the world is ephemeral. We know instinctively that it is wrong to tamper with.
When I was 10, I was restless at the thought that heaven was an eternity. A space where you reside for an infinity, unable to leave or change it.
Granted, what 10-year-old me found scarier was that heaven had no internet or video games forever. The misery is just too much to handle.
But try to imagine forever, I will give you a moment.
Much like quantifying a billionaire’s net worth, eternity is incomprehensible. What is forever? How would it feel? Where would things be… it is all too big to comprehend.
I am reminded of Tom Cardy’s Transcendental Cha Cha Cha, an existential, funky, comedic song about a space discotheque where all beings dance to all kinds of music for an eternity.
In the specific instance it is being observed, Cha Cha Cha music is being played for 3D-perceiving humans. Also, every universe has Zoomba music, which has a possibility of 10,003,008,528 x 10^42
I find the concept to be interesting. An interplanetary ballroom for beings of all dimensions and realities that exist forever. With this ability, what do they do? They organize a dance club where the drinks line is a forever wait while you watch the void bust some sick moves. In schemes so big, nothing means anything. Anything means nothing.
You are tangled with the universe, unable to untwine forever. What else is there to do but cluster with fellow immortals?
Horizon Zero Dawn’s Forbidden West also discusses something similar. After leaving Earth from an apocalypse caused by biomass-consuming nano machines, the Far Zenith developed advanced science and became effectively immortal.
They spend centuries in space. Once they come back to the original earth, they want to flush it anew and build it as they desire. The “primitives” who currently inhabit Earth are insignificant. They are too new, too mortal to matter. The Far Zeniths are gods. The earth was meant for them.
After doing video game stuff and taking them down, a character questions their motif. Why come back to earth? Why cause so much harm? Why rebuild Earth?
They were simply bored.
They have spent thousands of years in space doing whatever in virtual reality. Coming back to earth, destroying it as a whole just to rebuild it again, that’s just another thing to pass the time.
If we could live forever, we would not enjoy it.
We got sick of repeating the same day during lockdown. What if that boredom extended everywhere? When you become immortal, you will travel the world and experience every possible thing.
And what comes after? You are forever stuck with planet Earth as your cage. That existence must get mind-numbing as the days and time itself blend into one another lest we lobotomize ourselves.
It is in its finity that life gains value.
Cannot Be Without It
The Abyss Cannot Stare Back
So if death is a must and we recognize it to be important, then why does it feel so scary and anxiety-inducing?
A big part of what scares most of us about death is the void. Darkness. The feeling that you will not “exist” after some time, we do not understand it. It is harrowing to think of: quiet…solitude. A reality where there is no you. No, you for a long, long time.
For most of us, it is the impression of perceiving this eternity that makes us afraid. A feeling that when we die, we will be there to witness it. That we will “feel” the time pass by in cold, empty nothingness. And since we fear the unknown, as much of death remains a mystery, death becomes a harrowing endeavor.
It is within this fear that we can quell our paranoia.
For friends I asked, they had the following to say. If we think of death as to what it was like before we were born (we cannot remember anything) or what it feels like to sleep, then death is not that bad.
Indeed, when we become unconscious or recall pre-cognition, we can notice that, for the most part, it feels like nothing. We were not equipped with feeling it. If we do not have the means to feel post-mortem, then there is nothing to fear.
It is like asking a blind person to react to a scary image; how can they? They do not have the necessary properties to perceive and are thus unable to elicit a reaction. I would argue that if we are able to feel post-death as a voice in a void, then death would be much scarier.
In SOMA, a survival horror game, you learn throughout the game that your existence is nothing but a copy of your consciousness in a machine. A reproducible amount of you that is hosted in clones of carbon and copper.
There is one part in the game where the main character “transfers” their consciousness from one body to another. Only to realize that what actually happens is that their mind is duplicated. One version gets killed while the other is uploaded to a new body. Essentially, a long self-reincarnation cycle where every version of the main character is a new subversion of himself.
He is forced to watch “himself” being murdered and start in a new body. He is aware of his death in every copy but cannot feel it. A bone-chilling existential horror of constant death and transfers.
If provided the option, I believe most of us would rather not watch our death. Nor be able to feel it. If we can remain conscious after we pass and “feel” the passage of time, we would go insane.
People are free to believe in post-death, be it judgment day or reincarnation. But I ask you not to use it as a counterargument. Instead, consider the moment when you close your eyes for the last time, until the next event happens.
What goes on during that time? Do you feel much of it? Are you even capable of feeling it? I would like you to consider that specific period if your belief dictates something after passing.
Cut Too Short
In Hades, the game, Thanatos (based on the Greek mythos) is a romanceable character that acts as the Grim Reaper for mortals. There is this one interaction Zagreus, the main character, has with Thanatos:
Zagreus: “Than? I had another question about death. So ... why is it mortals grieve so much about the thing, I mean ... it definitely hurts there for a little while, but ... it’s not that bad.”
Thanatos: “They see it as their one and only chance. Imagine if, after you perished, that was it. Back to the infinite Chaos. Everything about you. Returned to how it was before you were even there.”
It always surprises me that the older one gets, the more they are willing to accept death. Since I was a kid, I found it very brave to hear the adults talk about death in such a surrendering manner. Do they truly mean it? Or are they masquerading as a false bravado? Now that I am a quarter through, I still find it shocking, but I am beginning to slowly understand it.
In my current age, I have many ambitions and desires. I want to own a house, become a great artist, get published as an author, learn so many things, travel around, and even become an internet celebrity. There are so many things I want to do, even though realistically I’ll only get around a few of them.
It is also a fact that, as a 24-year-old, I have only experienced 5-7 years of actively being able to choose what I want to do and becoming self-sufficient. The rest was growing up and finishing school. In terms of potential, I have only started.
The younger you are, the more things you want to achieve. If death takes you too soon, before you have had the time, then that is a tragedy. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton musical is all about achieving goals before running out of time. Alexander writes like he is running out of time…because he is.
I imagine that as you get older, reach your 70s and 80s, your body breaks down, your friends begin to pass away, and your ambition is kindled. Yet at the same time, you have had a life. You did the things you want to do. You have left a legacy. You have had quite the life.
So when death posts its schedule with your name on it, is the idea not enticing? I am sure it will be heavy to accept, but it does not sound so bad.
I will be grim and say that I am glad for the elderly being around. I am glad to know that research supports the fact that once we grow old, we naturally accept our perishing. It comforts me to know that I am no grander than the cycle of life. I am not special.
In Outer Wilds, you are stuck in a constant time loop. Every 20 minutes, a black hole consumes the world you are in, causing the explosion of the universe. As the player, you are tasked with tracking the melody and finding a way to stop the calamity.
So you spend hours, dying again and again, unravelling clues, shaping stories, and tracking mysterious tunes that haunt your Signalscope. You uncover an ancient civilization that has researched the same problem as you.
In the end, they were unsuccessful.
And as you progress through the game, you go from “how can I stop this?” to “how can I make peace with this?” That is when the game hits you with its biggest reveal.
You were not the first person to ever look for answers. There were people before you who had charted the same path and uncovered the same mystery. They all reached the same acceptance. You cannot stop the consumption of the universe.
So in the last 20 minutes, you all gather together and play music as the world unthreads. To this day, I cannot hear this song without being stirred emotionally. You can listen to it here.
In the end, life is ephemeral, and there is not much we can do about it. The universe is far too big and uncaring to be influenced by us. So until it all comes undone, why not be surrounded by friends and love?
You Must Face The Melody
One of the greatest characters ever made in video games (in my opinion) is Kindred, The Eternal Hunter, from League of Legends. Death here is depicted as a lonely man. Everyone and everything feared him. In response, he split himself in half to always have a friend. Thus, Lamb and Wolf came to be.
Those who accept death are delivered an easy death by Lamb’s arrow, while those who deny it are chased endlessly by Wolf. An encouragement that while death is scary, when we face it, a resolution can be achieved.
This is what it is all about.
Acceptance.
We can try to deny it or fight it, but death comes for us all. In a way, it is kind. It is compassionate through its neutrality. It is not personal. In fact, it is patient. It gave us a 90-year head start to take a stroll around the garden, smell the flowers, and run around.
The media likes to associate sand with time through the hourglass. A metaphor that if our time is sand, then it is ticking away, never to be flipped again.
I want the sand of my time to be a playground. So that when death gets to me, telling me it is time to go home from the playground of existence, I am exhausted from a long life of playing.
There is dirt on my hands and a scrape on my knee. I cried, saying goodbye to the friends made in the pit. I was probably nagging for another 5 minutes. I even lost my shovel and bucket for some kid to use next.
Yet it was so fucking fun.
It was so fun to leave such a nice sand castle with the friends I made. When I sleep in the arms of death, I will have a smile on my face from a fun play day out.