ABSTRACT
In this chapter, readers are invited to explore some of the fundamental aspects of what it is to be a human being. In particular, to have a sense of destination and knowledge that ultimately we will, one day, not-be. With a nod toward autoethnographical writing, the author, currently working as a counsellor within a palliative context in the UK, shares reflections upon contemporary cultural attitudes toward, and relationships with death and death anxiety, and looks at some of the ways in which we manage this awareness of our temporality. Through personal experiences both here in the UK, and abroad within a contrasting Middle-Eastern culture, she challenges and expands the dominant Western collective mindset toward death, offering an alternative existential perspective as a potential means of enhancing wellbeing, and living life to the full.
