As I was starting to write on the topic of this chapter, I came across a poem by Philip Larkin which helped me pin down what I wanted to say. Here is the last part of it:

This poem discusses the fear of dying, of extinction, to which Larkin confessed in interviews. But “fear of extinction” is an unhelpful phrase. There is no such thing as fear of inexistence as such, but only fear of some concrete loss. “Death” and “nothingness” are equally resounding, equally empty terms. To say one fears either is as clumsy as Epicurus's attempt to say why one should not fear them. Epicurus said, “When I am, death is not, and when death is, I am not”; thus exchanging one vacuity for another. For the word “I” is as hollow as the word “death.” To unpack such words, one has to fill in the details about the I in question, specify precisely what it is that will not be, make one's fear concrete.