Contrary to what many people think, there are logical reasons to embrace faith as a key component to accepting our mortality.

As distasteful as it is, we all learn from an early age that death is inevitable. We see our pets die, older relatives, contemporaries. At some point, we realize that death has taken many who are younger than ourselves. We go through life, living as if there will always be a tomorrow. We make plans for next week, next month, next year.

And we go through life fearing death, dodging it, guarding against it, avoiding risky acts that could precipitate it. We wonder when our time will come. We hope that our end will be quick and painless. We mourn those we have lost and fret over how to preemptively comfort our loved ones when our time comes.

And that’s where faith comes in.

If we were to analyze it, we would recognize that our fear of death has two versions. The first version, which most of us experience many times in our life, is the loss of a loved one. We fear this, and we mourn when we grasp that we will no longer have the opportunity to interact with those who precede us in death. There will be no more conversations, or gestures of affection. There will be no more mutual reminiscing about past times. There will be no more comforting moments or plans for the future.

And that’s where faith comes in.

The second version is facing our own demise. We struggle to grasp the concept of non-existence, at least as far as existing in this world. We cringe at the idea that our lifetime of memories and accumulated knowledge could merely be erased as if we never existed. We suffer at the thought that, at a time when they need us most, we will not be present to comfort our loved ones who mourn our passing. We fervently hope that our passing will not involve prolonged and painful sickness that tortures our loved ones to witness as much as it tortures us in our final days.

And that’s where faith comes in.

The primary component in our fear of death is the false belief that death is an end point rather than a transition. It is our ignorance of what lies beyond that moment of passing. It is simply, fear of the unknown.

For those of us fortunate enough to achieve senior citizen status, we know the clock is ticking. The final countdown has begun, but something akin to instinct may kick in. In addition, we recognize that death is necessary in a world with limited space, limited capacity to produce food, and limited ability to avoid conflict. Death is a natural and necessary step in the cycle of life that we have had the privilege of experiencing and, if we lived it right, we have had the opportunity to contribute.

And that is where faith comes in.

Once we embrace it, our faith provides the peace of mind we need to confront our own mortality. Faith means having confidence in our continuing existence beyond our earthly role. Faith means confidence that there is balance in our world and beyond, and that we are part of that balance. Faith means accepting that there are aspects of our existence that we cannot understand while in human form, and looking forward to the revelation that can only come when we transition into our new form of existence.

Faith means realization that we will all be reunited with our loved ones in that indefinable moment after our last earthly breath.

Faith marks the difference between hoping that there is an afterlife, and knowing for a certainty that there is. And that is the ultimate power of faith.