We should envy the dumb brutes. They eat when hungry and mate when horny. Simple. They also seem to have no awareness of their approaching death, and just like my dog that died from cancer, will happily bounce around until the last days. But not so for humans with a monster inside their heads that gives them no peace. Not only are we aware of our mortality, but we also anticipate things, unpleasant things in the main. As Ernest Becker points out, our minds have such an acute sense of reality that we choose to get lost in a world of symbols, images, and abstractions, because our mortality is too horrifying to contemplate. It’s a perfect setup: striving to persist while always aware, even subconsciously, of death.