In the poem, Lucretius proposes an idea, later termed the ‘Symmetry Argument’, that hints at the second thing you should do to overcome the fear of death: try to recall what it was like before you were born. Not how the world was, which is the task of historical imagination, but what it was like to be you – before you were created. You’ll discover that prenatal existence isn’t something that can be thought about, much less experienced. The symmetrical part of the argument, of course, is that you have the very same difficulty in imagining what it is like to be dead. Indeed, according to Lucretius, you-pre-existence is the same thing as death or post-existence: both involve the absence of you. No doubt you don’t fear your prenatal existence and logically speaking, given their equivalence, it follows that you should fear death the exact same amount, as in not at all. (As the novelist Vladimir Nabokov put it in his memoirs: ‘common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.’)
Sam Dresser, How to not fear your death: You exist, but one day you won’t. An Epicurean perspective can help you feel less afraid, and even grateful for life’s finitude.