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We live in a culture that has mastered the art of avoiding death.We don’t see it, we don’t talk about it, and we certainly don’t allow room for the fear of it — not in polite conversation, not in our friendships, not even in our family lives.
But Dr. Thomas Lewis makes something uncomfortably clear:Our silence hasn’t made death easier. It has made us more afraid.
Why?
Because the human brain is a prediction machine.It can model anything — danger, possibility, love, loss — but it cannot model its own non-existence.It literally cannot imagine a world without “you” in it.So it defaults to a kind of illusion: death is something that happens to other people.
And that illusion works… until it doesn’t.
In earlier centuries, death was woven into the fabric of life.People died at home, surrounded by family.Children grew up watching life end, not in horror, but as part of the natural rhythm of being human.
Today, you can go an entire lifetime without seeing a body.Death has been sterilized, outsourced, hidden behind hospital curtains.And when something disappears from view, it becomes mysterious… and then frightening… and then taboo.
The result is a quiet epidemic of unspoken fear.People aren’t just afraid of dying —they’re afraid of admitting they’re afraid.
But here’s the part that gives this conversation its power:
Anxiety grows in silence.Anxiety shrinks when shared.
And a little less afraid.
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