Reply #49: It's not just the finality of death, it's the eventuality of death.

[greyl]

From another angle, it's the temporal limitation of life. No matter how one chooses to live one's life, one's life will end eventually. There may be over 6 and a half billion subtly different strategies that humans are taking at this moment to deal with that one. Some of them at the extreme place a higher value on their imagined immortality than on their own and other's lives. Some withdraw from the world, others are creators and destructors.
The evidence is overwhelming that our culture is preoccupied with belief systems, delusions, and behaviours from numbing to ecstatic, which are based upon the repeating deep-consciousness mantra: "Somehow, I must be immortal, somehow, I must escape this life".

"Although I find Heaven a pleasing thought, it just doesn't make much sense."

I'm realizing that we may be using different definitions of Heaven. The Heaven that's up in the sky with harps, thrones, pearly gates and virgins? Yes, I agree, that's Great Pumpkin territory.

"I would rather believe in my own inadequate way that I tried to live my life in the best way I could"

I wholly agree with the heart of what you said, but why not describe your way as adequate?
Screw self deprecation. :)