For Becker, an exaggerated fear of death reveals a deep and often subconscious dissatisfaction with one’s life. What we really fear when we obsess over our death is that we aren’t making the most of our lives. We feel stuck in bad relationships, unsupportive communities, or oppressive careers. That was certainly the case for me. I was drawn toward the apocalyptic view of climate change twenty years ago. I can see now that my heightened anxiety about climate change reflected underlying anxiety and unhappiness in my own life that had little to do with climate change or the state of the natural
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