Not sure what dr. Strangelove is but pain doesn't scare me, its only temporary. However fear of the unknown is a bit nerving. As far as an encore im not sure either id be in the fetal position sucking my thumb, or I think id want a bottle of grey goose, and a few bong hits considering I wouldn't be getting drug tested for work anymore.
Suppose death is it. Your mind goes away. Then the only thing to fear is the final loss of one's most precious possession, consciousness. And since in this case that loss is inevitable, there's no point in wasting time fearing it; each moment you spend worrying about what you will lose is a moment that you have lost: a momentary death. String enough of those together, and you might as well not have lived.
On the other hand, suppose death is not the end, and your mind continues. Then death is a bump on the tracksa chance to get derailed, and go off in a different direction. If the direction you are going in now is a bad direction, it might be worth the gamble. If you feel like you're on a good path, then death can have a really bad outcome.
This is the rationale behind a whole host of Buddhist practices that try to get you to project a new life where you still are attracted to the path, and quickly get back on track. One of the most basic practices, of course, is remembering the impermanence of life and generating real concern for what might come next.
As for what my grand finale might be, I think it's important to live every moment as if it were the grand finale, because it very well could be. But in order to live this way, you have to let go of the idea of climaxes. Not that you stop reaching themif you do it right, you will probably reach them more often. But you have to make every moment meaningful, not just the climaxes. So if there were something that I'd want to do more of, it would be doing nice things for people. I made someone a really beautiful macchiato yesterday for a guest. That was nice.
I have never been afraid of the unknown, in particular, as ridiculous as it may be to say so. What truly scares me the most is the feeling that I might spend all my time here on Earth without doing anything of real worth or note. Even worse is not knowing if what I may have done could have long term positive consequences. I love the movie Dr. Strangelove (and all Kubrick's works, just about), but the way it ends is actually exactly how I DON'T want to go out!! I don't want to die doing something negative like riding a bomb to my own, and everyone else's doom. I love that you listen to NPR though, and I thought that was a really great day to be listening to the radio when they played various songs that were the ones people would like to go out to.
I guess that, right of the bat, the one that seems fitting to me would be The End, by the Doors (for brevity I would prefer the Radio Edited Version though, so I could have more time lost in thought afterward to be ready for the world to end). That song ends with a whimper and not a bang, which is much like how I imagine the real end of the world will be...if there is one. I am not convinced I think there will be one though. If you are a fan of physics, I would have to say that I believe in the theory that the world is just between big bangs now. I think that eventually we will just have the universe collapse in again and it will start over. I am not a proponent of the whole heat death theory of continuous expansion. It just doesn't seem right to me that there is not enough mass in quarks or enough dark matter to bring us back together eventually. The hopeful thing about that is the fact that we would still be in the beginning of the cycle of bangs if that is true.
As to what about death actually frightens me, I think it would have to be exactly what Hamlet said: "For in that sleep of death, what dreams might come?" I fear that for all things this brief flowering of life is all there is. I am not convinced that there is an afterlife to look forward to, but it is true that what we are is matter and energy that has always been, so there is certainly immortality in that. It is not the unknown that scares me, but that I might not really ever KNOW what life is, while I have it, and that afterward there might be no consciousness to appreciate what I had. What dreams may come? I may be trapped in eternal nightmare or else I might be lost without any recourse to my previous form at all. All I can say is that I hope there is some semblance of consciousness in the time after death, if just so that we can all know what we were in the scheme of things. I think Mellon has some real points. I think it is worth generating the legitimate concern for what might come after. I am not a highly superstitious person, but it seems to me that the value of religion is that it raises concern about the afterlife for the purpose of encouraging us to do our best here with the time we have. If you know you have done all you can, then the grand finale hardly matters. You will inevitably have the audience on your side.
I just recently got audible.com for my phone and have been listening to Alan Watts "You're it!", he describes the essence of life and death as being compared to the wave of an ocean, or for that matter almost any dichotomy can be looked at this way, from quantum physics to any metaphysical analogy. That the expression of the crest and trough are expressions of the whole system. You can't have one without the other. So being and non being are essential parts of the whole. You can't have life without death and knowing without the unknown. It's up to you and I how we use the moment we have. To live however you choose, awake or not, ultimately either is an expression of the universe.
