When I was a boy I used to lie awake some nights and think about the world, the solar system and the universe. I could feel myself floating through space, adrift, watching the world from the heavens. I began to realise how finite the world and all it's life forms are. It made me think of my own mortality in the most clear and frank way. After that I would frequently be overcome by an almost paralysing awareness that my end and the deep unknown thereafter were out there waiting for me. I had long forgotten this feeling until last week, when it returned as I was drifting off. It terrifies me to know that I shall end, never to think or feel again, that all of my personal experience will vanish forever. The finality of it scares me more than anything I have ever known.