Mortality: How can awareness change your life?

     No specific focus for this blog -- just lots on wandering (and wondering) thoughts. I have gone past the anniversary of 60 years of the earth moving around the sun. I occasionally talk to my children about preparing for my not being around anymore. They don't like this at all -- but it isn't something that will become easier with time and they need to deeply understand that they cannot stay reliant on their mother and myself -- that there is pressing need to be able to fly out of the nest.
     Not that I plan to die tomorrow. Who does? (Well, some souls do have a more precise knowledge to encourage preparation.) The general societal culture in the United States is one of avoidance of death -- the attempt to live forever (preferably looking like one did at age 21) seems to be in many of the increasing number of sales brochures that arrive in my mailbox (electronic or physical).
     Various strategies for immortality have been attempted over the centuries. Presently, cryogenic preservation and digital simulation/storage are among the more active avenues being attempted (none have been proven to work so far).
     There is no reason that a person should NOT attempt to be the healthiest (mentally and physically) possible while they are loping around this world -- as long as they aren't spending most of their time and thoughts on doing that instead of actually living their lives. Or, as I like to put it, "worrying about things is often worse for your health than the things you worry about".
     Robert A. Heinlein's story "Lifeline" dealt with the idea that a machine could be developed that can tell you when the lifeline is to be cut -- the day that you would die. Of course, this was not good for the insurance companies. It did not end well, of course, but the sealed envelope the inventor left ... well just read the story.
     I don't think I would like to know just what day my story ends. But I like to think that I do use my awareness of my mortality to live my life as best as I can. I have lost my fear of saying "I love you" to people as I am much more afraid that I might leave without letting them know. I try to keep my "things in order" so that my wife will know where all the accounts are if I'm not around and can pay the bills and make use of the money we have saved.
     However, I do NOT have my study or house in as tidy of shape as I used to have it. As Bill Murray says in "Meatballs" -- It Just Doesn't Matter. Oh, I'll fight the fight against entropy when I can -- or when it becomes important to my wife -- but I no longer consider it to be a major sin.
     I have a general (and, possibly, more conscious than many) daily awareness of my life's eventual end but I don't update my obituary each day. I know that STATISTICALLY I have quite a few more years in me as my ancestors who died "natural" deaths tended to live quite a while. So, it only affects me in a mild (and, hopefully, positive) way.
     One way that my own attitude affects me, however, is that of being more aware of OTHER people's mortality and a wondering of how their circumstances change their lives. If a person lives in a country at war, or with a large degree of terrorism and destruction on a daily basis, how does this change how they deal with life on a daily basis? If, because of skin color, ethnicity, or religion, they know that others may irrationally murder them as they walk down the street how does that change their attitude toward life each day? Do they embrace life and speak loudly and laugh as much as they can and generally live each day to the full? Or do they move from one shadow to the next hoping to increase their chances of making it to the next day? Or perhaps it is a mixture of all -- changing from day to day and person to person.
     There is, of course, the other end of the spectrum -- being so scared of one's eventual mortality that paranoia, selfishness, and self-isolation become daily crutches. As Frank Herbert says in Dune -- "fear is the mind killer" and death certainly qualifies for fear for many. For some, it reaches a degree of fear that they forget to actually enjoy what they can while they are still alive. I don't know but I would suspect that people who live in a higher-than-average dangerous situation learn to suppress reasonable fear because, realistically, there is little they can do.
     How does the reality of death affect you? Is it a subject to avoid? A matter-of-fact reality? Can a person really prepare for the unknown? Is awareness a potential blessing or a curse?