Can Happiness Make You Feel More Ready Face Death?

[sgn]

"Now I can die happily" is a phrase I sometimes hear.
Why is this? The better I feel the less afraid of death it feels like I am.
The more depressed, the more the thought of death seems like a nice way out, but there's more fear and less readiness.

I come to think of some factors.
If you are happy and at peace you may feel:
- More grateful for what you've already gotten out from life, and because of this:
- More acceptance and less self-pity about it
- Less irrational thoughts about death, so less fear
- Less clinging

It almost seems a bit weird that if you feel so happy and at peace you would want to hold on to life more, because it feels like you loose more.
I've heard some enlightened people say they are ready to face death at any moment and it seems like they almost don't care 

[Vladz0r]

I guess for me, it's like 3 states of being.

 

Not being in a state of happiness, and getting off track with my life purpose, and stalling everything makes me feel like "Oh well, I could walk out my door and get shot and that'd be pretty ok with me. I wasn't going to do anything big, anyway." Or "I could kill myself now and it wouldn't really matter. Nothing big's going on right now."

If I start to get on track and realize my potential, then I start to get more realistic about it, and think more about my own safety. I re-ground myself, and I'm more careful about going out at night. When you're on a mission, you don't want it to end abruptly.

But when I'm in a state of total acceptance, you really feel like "If I were to die right now, I'd be happy." When I go for walks, I usually think much about the past or future, but I sometimes flash forward to the idea of "What if I died, or wanted to commit suicide. How would I feel about it now?" to gauge how things are for me at the moment. If I'm eager to die, it might be because I'm avoiding work I need to be doing. 

We have to build up my ego and attachments to accomplish big goals with life purpose, so naturally I'd think you'd want to die less. But if you pair it with acceptance, you're literally ready to face anything, even death or intense suffering.

The "feeling better" that you're experiencing is probably coming from a place of acceptance. Maybe you haven't thought about death as a means to escape suffering (suicide). Until we get into a near-death experience where someone puts a gun up to our head and we're forced to react, either afraid or unphased, we might not really know how deeply prepared we are for death.