Living with Mortality: Academic edition

How do we live fully when we know our lives will end?

Awareness of death can raise questions about everything we value: the people we love, the future we imagine, the things left unfinished and whether a life can matter if it does not last forever.

In Living with Mortality: How do I live with myself knowing I will end?, Stuart Corlett explores these questions through philosophy, psychological research and the ordinary experiences that make a life worth living.

This academic edition examines fear of dying, the loss of a future, beliefs about an afterlife and what research into death anxiety can—and cannot—explain. It considers unfinished lives, persistent fear, the prospect of immortality, care and dependency, and a world that will continue without us.

Drawing on years of cross-cultural health work in Thailand and along the Myanmar border, Corlett approaches differing beliefs with curiosity and care. He makes room for uncertainty while defending a central possibility: relationships, experiences and acts of kindness can have value without lasting forever.

This book offers no promise of perfect calm. It invites readers to consider how meaning, humour, pleasure and love can belong to a finite life—even while fear remains.

The second of three linked books exploring bereavement, mortality and our responses to the suffering of others.