Fear of Death

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I recently read Van Goghs letters to his brother and in one he wrote, “Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”

My mom was terrified of death and went to extremes to avoid it. She believed, "law of attraction" style, that people only die because they accepted it as inevitable. She wouldn't eat cooked food or keep a microwave in the house because carcinogens and radiation cause cancer. She died of a rare and aggressive cancer at 49, no chemo, and on the strictest vegan diet any dying person could subject themselves to. To this day I can't help but think of her as a ghost, floating around beating herself up for all the things she did to draw a premature death to herself. In my brain I'm constantly trying to pull her out of her obsessive life fixation, like "Mom, there's no do-over. When do you finally let it go and give yourself time to enjoy flying, or scaring people away from prime real estate, or appearing in your grandchildren's' dreams? You're such a young ghost, and you're wasting your afterlife."

My best friend ended her own life around 8 months ago. In a note she had told her parents to give to me, she said that she had been planning to end her life for around 1 month. My brain is so against the idea that the only thing that truly mattered in her life was how it ended, yet every conversation that mentions her is about that topic, or at the very least is tainted by it, forever. I appreciate your interpretation that Van Gogh's paintings were not all a journey to his suicide, but instead a part of a person who was much more than his method of death. Thank you for this video.

This was truly a fantastic video. Can’t wait for what you make in 2024, the personal narrative here was really special.

I lost my dad to suicide about a year ago. Aside from the 'regular' grief of loss, now every highlight, every childhood memory, every thing that reminds me of the positives of him, comes distorted through the lens of knowing how the story ended. I try to reconnect, and I can value those moments like you can value the paintings of Van Gogh. But there's that fact of knowing how it ends that injects this undertone, that makes the pattern-seeking in our brains look for some kind of foreshadowing, even in the moments that didn't strike you as being a premonition for what was going to happen. I read his journals, and like with the Bell Jar, you read someone's lows and have in your mind this expectation, from books and movies and shows, that the low point only exists so that someone can come out of it. We're primed to feel like the lows only exist as setup for triumph. It's not supposed to end when the character is at their lowest. Sometimes it does.

That bit about having watched the musical and wanting to talk to your father again so you can tell him why you hate it, very visceral to me. Damn. Thank you.

This was beautiful, well done <3

This is really good, I'm glad you made this.

this truly felt like a genre of essay that I havent seen as much in video form. i think it was beautiful, and touching, and tragic in a way that feels so banal. thanks

Man. The wanting a Carousel conversation rings so true. The last conversation I had with my grandfather was me telling him about seeing the movie Cats. He didn’t have a very expressive face, but he seemed… puzzled, in a fun way. Sometimes I think about the fact that our last conversation was on something so stupid, but there’s also beauty and humanity in that. Thank you for this video

My father died of a heart attack when he was 39 and I was 13. I'm now older than my father was. It's only been a year since I "cought up" to his age and I'm trying to figure out how to handle that, but I uncontrolably and cathartically cried through most of this video and I thank you for that.

What makes me a fan of Carousel is the song "If I Loved You", which is my favorite showtune by a long, long mile. It's one of the most beautiful songs in the world to me. The futility is the point. They predict their whole romance with that gut wrenching song - they're never able to tell each other I love you. They knew from their first meeting they wouldn't be able to express their feelings, and how detrimental that would be, and yet they went ahead and followed the script anyway. Just like Billy, who knows meeting his daughter that this is his one chance to do better, knows what the wrong choice is, and still can't bring himself to succeed. I do think abusers can change, and maybe even redeem themselves, but it takes years if not decades of work. Maybe Billy could have changed, could have done better, but a day wasn't enough time. He could have told his wife he loved her, he knew he felt that way, knew he should have done it, but he didnt until it was too late. One of the bleakest part of human experience for me is knowing what you're about to do is wrong, and just not being able to hit the stop button. Knowing full well you're being cowardly or cruel and knowing before you even act that you'll regret it. I haven't seen another piece of media really tackle that experience. Carousel is strange and gross and sad. It's always really hit me

My mom died in front of me, after the better part of a decade fighting cancer. I am not afraid of death, I have no hopes or believes about it and I don't want to be dead - but am not afraid of it. I am afraid of dying, though I'm afraid of the process, I've seen how gruesome and unbearable it can be and I am terrified of it.

I know I'm just another in a few hundred heavy comments, but this video came at a moment in my life were I truly am scared of where I am, what I might be, and where I'm going. Knowing that I'm not the only one trying to make sense of a world that means nothing and owes me nothing is comforting, in a way. You're not alone. I'm not alone. We're all experiencing our lives together.

my coworker died in an accident two weeks ago at age 20. i’ve recently been afraid of how quickly everything can change, how one small thing can change everything hugely, for better or for worse. i’m also very young, and the idea of death is still really not something i’m comfortable with, and i’m sure my coworker wasn’t comfortable with it either, she didn’t get the chance to even think about it before it happened. her funeral is next week, and all my other coworkers are working as normal, and i’m scared to go back to work and see people pretending it didn’t even happen, that someone who was alive is not alive anymore. i’m scared to go to the funeral and talk to my other coworkers about banal things, and hear people talk about how she was a great and talented person, instead of screaming about how fucking unfair it is that she died at age 20, and here we all are, still living and experiencing things. i’m tired of pretending that death doesn’t just fucking suck. i’m an english student, and i enjoy finding meaning in things and in life. but i cant find meaning in this.

A little over a month ago, I was diagnosed with a subtype of OCD I didn’t know existed called Existential OCD. I have intrusive thoughts about death, eternity, and existence on a daily basis that’s been heavily amplified by my mother’s death early this year. While I am going to therapy for it (as well as many other reasons) I know I will probably never find the answers I’m looking for. This video should have filled me with that same feeling of intense fear and it did a little but for whatever reason, I was comforted by it. Maybe it’s something about hearing those fears and postulations put to words that aren’t my own, I don’t know. This video means a lot to me, even though I don’t understand why, so although I know Joel probably won’t see this, I just wanted to say thank you.

My dad is dead a few days ago. A furious prostate cancer. He never suffered and died with his family at home. Less than 20% die at home and many suffers from physical or mental pain and the fact that I'm in the medical field helped me alot. In my country health is "free" (collective systems are more efficient and cost less than private/individual healthcare systems) so we did not pay much. Also I can have a large part of my precedent salaries during unemployment due to politics precedent generation voted so I could stay at home and heal him for 2 years without working officially. I hope someday everybody in world will access to death with dignity and comfort even in poverty. Contrary to our swiss neighboor we didnt legalized euthanasia yet and I hope we will do it someday. For the moment, the maximum we can do is injecting morphine and midazolam even if the risk of death if very high but it is not the same. His death was less painful for him and for us (it was not brutal and he was 72), he hated being hospitalized. And I did not wanted to see my father dying in loneliness like many elders do unfortunately

It was striking to me when you mentioned we almost always see Christ depicted as either a baby or a dying/dead man. We not only never see him come back to life but we never see him just living his life. As a secular person with cultural ties to Christianity who is searching for meaning in my own life I often wish that Christianity showed us more about how he lived.

I also lost my dad, almost 3 years ago to a drug overdose. I was the one who found his body because I went to deliver his Christmas present on Dec. 26th, worried that I didn't hear from him on Christmas day. He lived in a housing complex for addicts and people just off the street. It was a pretty miserable place to live, essentially one tiny bedroom for each person and all their things including a fridge for food. They experience deaths there quite often as you might imagine. It's abysmal, and just another reason why my city should be ashamed of itself. Idk what else to say.