Accepting and Embracing Our Mortality

Perspect Biol Med. 2023;66(3):451-460. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2023.a902037.

Abstract

Aging and death need to be seen as a single reality, aging-and-death. Separating them largely voids the lessons to be learned from aging, and the benefits of seeing life as a whole and learning a new sense of beauty, meaning, hope, and love. All the distinctive experiences central to our sense of ourselves as human beings are tied to recognition of our mortality. Living a full life means accepting and embracing death as not only inevitable, but necessary and desirable.

MeSH terms

  • Aging* / psychology
  • Attitude to Death*
  • Death
  • Humans
  • Mortality / trends