In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death, anthropologist Ernest Becker argues that most human action is taken to ignore or avoid the inevitability of death. However, psychologists Joshua Hicks and Yuhui Du argue that denying death is not the answer. Rather, increased awareness of death often increases meaning in life. Death makes life more coherent, purposeful, and significant, and by embracing death, we can be more ready to die with the knowledge that we will leave something meaningful behind.

William James famously observed that “death is the worm at the core of human existence.” Despite our meaningful relationships, notable successes, and cherished pleasures, we remain aware that all of it will one day end, often sooner than we would like, and at a time we cannot predict. Although there is no escaping this insurmountable existential threat, we possess the psychological capacity to make the awareness of death more bearable, even transformative, by imbuing life with meaning.

Before examining why meaning may serve as an antidote to death, or at least to the anxiety it evokes, it is worth clarifying what “meaning” actually means. Most people have an intuitive sense of what it means for life to be meaningful, but in psychological research, meaning is typically viewed as a multifaceted construct composed of several distinct components or pathways.

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When time feels limited, priorities often sharpen. People reevaluate values, repair neglected relationships, and revise the blueprint of their lives to better align with what truly matters.

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First, a meaningful life is one that is coherent, that is, it makes sense and is comprehensible to the individual. Second, meaning often involves a sense of purpose, reflecting the presence of goals and direction that organize one’s actions and experiences. Third, a meaningful life is characterized by the feeling of significance, the belief that one’s life matters to both others and one’s self. Significance itself can take two forms: sociocultural significance, the sense that one’s life has value within a broader social or moral framework, and experiential significance, the felt sense that life experiences are inherently valuable and worth living. We next consider how each of these dimensions of meaning uniquely relates to the experience of death anxiety.

Coherence

For most people, coherence is not a struggle to attain. Life generally makes sense. If it didn’t, we would feel as bewildered as Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole. From an early age, humans need to make sense of their environment in order to survive, and that basic capacity continues to develop throughout life. Early on, we adopt general beliefs such as the world is good or good things happen to good people. As we mature, this sense of coherence becomes further crystallized through the development of a stable personal identity, which helps us move through life in seemingly predictable, manageable patterns. In this way, coherence may keep thoughts of death from surfacing too often or too vividly by keeping us plugged into the “matrix” of life.

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Unfortunately, certain life events, such as trauma, loss, or other major life disruptions, can shatter this sense of order. The awareness of death represents one of the most powerful examples of these types of disruptions, whether through a cancer diagnosis, a sudden accident, or the painful loss of someone we love. When life feels like it no longer makes sense, we experience a kind of existential disorientation. Such crises often coincide with a breakdown in coherence, and, with it, a profound loss of meaning.