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In my mid twenties I started dreaming about death, waking up in the middle of the night *knowing* that I was going to die. It was very dark, and I became a militant atheist for awhile, mostly out of anger at this inescapable knowledge. People told me to go to a doctor but I went to school and read lots of philosophy instead. Eventually I lightened up. It has never come back with the same intensity, but it changed my outlook permanently. I agree with the theory that a lot of human activities are motivated by a desire to avoid thinking about death, including drug and alcohol use and achievement-seeking. Kurt Vonnegut said we're put on earth to fart around, wisdom that came from his experience of the bombing of Dresden. Reading that in Salon recently, it seemed to legitimise my whole life, which has been spent farting around, and it's been interesting, though not especially lucrative. These days I think I'm kind of a happy person, under all the superficial stuff that I occasionally get exercised about, and it's a long term result of those death dreams. You never know, maybe this experience you're having will turn out to be a strange kind of gift.
