It is not death that people are afraid of. It is the mystery, the suddenness, the hollow unknown that surrounds death that is even dreadful.
Death is a phase of life, like birth, we can never escape it. But unlike birth, no one knows what lies behind it. All those who have died did never came back to give testimonies of what had happened whilst in state of death.
If faith would patch that hollow, there are even more reason why we fear death. When and how we will die is information undisclosed to any of us. Humanity seems to have been programmed that after life, death follows. But how and when death comes is unknown and that what is frightening.
Yet as much as we need information about what is in death, our search remains vain. And perhaps those who are there are communicating it to us, but we cannot comprehend it. There are numbers of experiments aiming to communicate with the dead, to ask them what they had been through. These experiments, however, remain to be vague. The only way to have access of what is behind death is to experience it. Yet those who had a near death experience cannot even comprehend what they had been through. Sometimes out of desperation for an answer, we make ourselves contented with the information we have and cling to faith.
Perhaps it is helpful to see death in some of our experience in life. Did you remember your first out-of-country adventure? When you first had it, were there some anxieties that immediately crawl into your nerves? Your first reaction after excitement is to search information about the place, as well as how and what people had experience in that place. You do search to calm your anxieties. Yet, most adventures have some planning. Unlike out-of-country adventure, however, death comes sudden and usually unplanned.
Do you remember when you had a surprise quiz in your most difficult subject? You are not afraid of that quiz but you are instead afraid that you cannot answer any of the questions. You are then afraid to fail. Death is like a surprise quiz. But again, unlike surprise quiz, death never brings us back to the same life.
Have you experience falling from a height? After you fall, you became unconscious. It feels like you are just dreaming. But others do not have the same experience. And that what makes death fearful, just like life, death seems to be not the same for everyone.
Life is probably telling us that death is just another life. It may not be a continuation of this life, but it will surely come as a form of life. How we want to life that life? Probably how we live our life here have some influence, just like a surprise quiz.
