Death anxiety is tricky. It's contained in every living moment, but it is also masked creatively by all of us. Some use love affairs to have a delusion of togetherness, some devote their lives to causes to feel a sense of meaning, some have children or push their children to have grandchildren to delay the horror of decay, and many others turn to religions for comfort.
But there's an important benefit of death anxiety: it motivates. When we know there's an end, we push ourselves to hit milestones and excel. We like to welcome beginnings and fear endings, but it is the ending that gives meaning and value to the process. It is death, or more precisely, the anxiety of death, that gives meaning to life.
