Yeah well still locked in the whole 'why?' loop on that one.
Well, to me, it's because I find value in the experience.
I think one of my driving questions in life is "What does it mean to be human?" so that I can truly understand the big picture and live the most fulfilling life.
I also am finding increasing value in accepting circumstances placed on me, then finding out how to live within them in the fullest way.
Pain is not something to be feared, it is to be experienced and learned from.
Also, it's part of "living in the moment" and being alive, to me; too much rationalization pulls us further and further away from Now.
We stop living and instead merely think about living.
That seems foolish to me, intellectually -- we are robbing ourselves.
As far as I've got with my reckoning, regretting their loss is far too close to wishing to rescind it and that's a bad thing.
I guess. I can't speak for you. For me, it's not that at all.
But I also have a large artistic/aesthetic side, so experiencing sensations and feelings is an act in itself, it doesn't mean I want to change anything.
Precisely. It just leaves me in awe how life, death and afterlife can always be discussed without anyone daring to raise the possibility (and it is a strong one as far as we can tell) that you just plain stop existing as an individual.
As I've gotten older, I had to face that more and more.
For a long time I thought life was utterly pointless unless we were eternal and did not understand the other.
I don't know what changed but in the last few years it did. Now it doesn't matter to me whether I live or die beyond this life, it simply makes my life here more precious and I want to live more fully... regardless of the risk. It gives my choices meaning, I think, and left me completely responsible for them.
(That's why I go by the "Christian agnostic/existentialist" label now.)