RE: Death: what does it mean to you?
People (at the very least, a notable population in America) fear death and crave immortality. I feel as though this pain could be alleviated by, not only accepting it as an inevitability, but by also realizing there are simply many ways to die. People as they know themselves can suffer personality changes that distance themselves from their past iterations drastically. Is this not a mini-death in of itself? The "coming of age" story, for example - where the child must learn to die and make way for a genetically backed coup of maturity (the death of innocence). Further still, people can change so frequently in their lives that you can wonder if you even knew the same person. Nothing is written in stone. Given this fact, you would think people might see death a little differently. Not as an end, per se, but as a change of states.
In fact, I fear the idea of the immortal. One must be trapped on a dark path if their personality is unmovable, for they are doomed to walk a path of desolation alone.
Oh yes, I find I fear the thought of immortality too.
I must agree we change so much that apart of us dies... Not just through the development growth as you state "coming of age" part of you defiantly "dies" here but also through trauma and other experiences.
So other than the normal growing and changing that I went through being a girl, I could say I've change /died on top of this another 3 times. And one of those deaths I can say was a complete change.. I do not see any part of my old self in me any more, from physically to morally to mentally. This death was due to illness and emotional change.
The concept of death is fluid, it doesn't just apply to the physical body and it can be viewed as a positive..