We all know from our personal experience that we can be ourselves only in and through our world and there is a sense in which 'our' world will die with us although 'the' world will go on without us.

The world still terrifies us. We're told to write what we know. We write what we're afraid of. Only then is our fear made small by what we love.

The world, whatever we might think about it terrified by its vastness and by our helplessness in the face of it, embittered by its indifference to individual suffering — of people, animals, and perhaps also plants, for how can we be sure that plants are free of suffering; whatever we might think about its spaces pierced by the radiation of stars, stars around which we now have begun to discover planets, already dead? still dead? — we don’t know; whatever we might think about this immense theater, to which we may have a ticket, but it is valid for a ridiculously brief time, limited by two decisive dates; whatever else we might think about this world — it is amazing.

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves,

We Have Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself

So many things that are so dramatic or exciting when you read about them actually happen so simply and quietly. We humans like to consider ourselves important to creation and to the world, and we expect that whenever death comes it should be with a crash of thunder and wild shouts or something, or with soft music around and people looking grave and serious. We always have it that way in the theatre because it makes us believe in our importance. Most of our life is a matter of dressing ourselves up to believe in just that, dressing ourselves in attractive clothes, in titles, in reputations. Actually, at base we all realize that we're just a frightened bundle of animals, still afraid of the unknown, and still afraid of thousands of things that can separate us from life, and trying to shield ourselves from our own smallness.

There’s a certain comfort that comes with knowing how you fit in the world. Anything that shakes up that comfort — even if it could potentially make your life better — is inherently scary.

Wir existieren nicht mehr, wo wir sind; wir existieren nur, wo wir nicht sind. Ist es dann der Mühe wert, dass wir eine solch große Furcht vor dem Tod haben, wenn die Bedingung, in welcher und durch welche wir leben, dieselbe bleibt?

Life... is a paradise to what we fear of death.

It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive.

How many of us now realize that space is the same thing as mind, or consciousness? That when you look out into infinity you are looking at yourself? That your inside goes with your entire outside as your front with your back? That this galaxy, and all other galaxies, are just as much you as your heart or your brain? That your coming and going, your waking and sleeping, your birth and your death, are exactly the same kind of rhythmic phenomena as the stars and their surrounding darkness? To be afraid of life is to be afraid of yourself.

We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.

What we feel is the only thing that exists for us, and we project it into the past, into the future, without letting ourselves be stopped by the fictitious barriers of death.

What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.