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Fear of Death
Reading this article leads one to believe that a lack of fear of dying is a sign of depression.
That kind of bothers me on several levels, mostly personal. I'm not afraid of dying. I'm pretty sure that life will continue on quite happily for almost everybody when I die. The few who notice or care about my death will be discommoded or unhappy for a short while, but no one's life will be seriously bent out of shape. This not only doesn't bother me, I think it's pretty normal for someone who's not a celebrity or widely known. The world doesn't end when I die. I know this because too many people I know have died and the world didn't end at their deaths. Life continued on, changed, but it settled into new routines and went on.
I don't actively seek death, but I do enjoy some exciting things (skateboarding, building stuff, doing things myself, a lot of survival activities, and so on - and have to do some things that are dangerous but necessary; for instance, driving in congestion is not my top all time favorite thing to do, it's dangerous and if an accident happens, it's time consuming and dull. But I realize and am comfortable with the fact that when I die (and death is inevitable - we all know the price of living is death), things will keep on.
I don't consider that depressive or a subtle sign of passive suicide in me.
But the next to last paragraph really bugs me: is finally happy enough to be afraid of death. It's like the message is you can only be happy if you're afraid of death.
I'm not saying this well, but I don't think the two are that closely correlated. I am quite happy most of the time (when I'm not angry or frustrated or hurt...), and my feelings about death are not impacted in any way by how I feel about death. I am capable of being happy while at the same time being comfortable that I might die in a car accident on the way home or not wake up in the morning.
Death and my feelings about death do not control my happiness.
This doesn't mean that's not true for other people, it's just true for me.