This willingness is by no means the same feeling that prompts the useless and unmeaning exclamation, “Oh, I wish I were dead!” The average person gets into such an unreasoning state over every little happening that he cannot see any connection between the events in his daily life. He becomes discouraged, and thinks for the moment that he would like to quit it all. No matter how many years such an one has lived, he has not attained a “ripe old age.” Ripeness has no part in petty impatience; it implies mellowness, soundness, and general wholesomeness of character.
As man is learning more and more about his life, he is finding that sickness, premature old age, and untimely death are, in a large measure, due to his own misunderstanding of the purposes of life. It is this misunderstanding that gives the mysterious air to life. We fear the mysterious, for our ingrained habit of regarding things that we do not yet understand as insoluble mysteries is a relic of the days when savage man found mystery and danger in everything.
So, if we are making ourselves unhappy, losing sleep, and suffering physical and mental distress because of the possible approach of death, we may dismiss that cause of worry. As soon as we begin to consider the purposes of life and our relation to them, we shall naturally avoid excesses in eating; live as hygienically as possible; harbor cleanly, uplifting thoughts, helpful to others and to ourselves, and so reach out spiritually for a fuller understanding of the purposes of all life. And what we cease to fear for ourselves, we soon cease to fear for our other selves.
Living thus, we shall not fear death, but shall move toward it without thinking of it, knowing that it is natural, merely the long sleep of the objective consciousness.
Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet!
Nothing comes to thee new or strange.
Sleep full of rest from head to feet;
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.