“I know, man is born fasting, to the iftar table of death.”

There are countless creatures in the world. But only one of them, us humans, is conscious of the passing time and aware that we will die.

Death is a reality that confronts us with the icy face of extinction. In fact, knowing this reality of extinction and carrying this burden in our minds every day is difficult in itself.

As a result of knowing this, death is the root cause of all our anxieties and the primary source of our pathologies. One can face death, fear it, ignore it, but one cannot escape it.

The fear of death is always and everywhere present. This fear is so deep-rooted that a great deal of one's energy in life is actually spent in denial of death. Even producing things in life or reproducing to perpetuate our lineage are actually ways of neutralizing death. We want to achieve a symbolic immortality by leaving a lasting mark on the world.

To cope with the fear of extinction, human beings develop ways of coping. For example, forgetting this reality as much as possible, suppressing it, not confronting it. But the reality of death is stubborn. It often reminds us of itself at different points in life.

The position formed here constitutes the existential conflict. Existential conflict is, in Irwin Yalom's words, “the tension between the awareness of the inevitability of death and the desire to continue existing.”

Can man turn this tension in his favor? In other words, can he make his life more meaningful and productive by facing the existence of death? Is it possible for death to make a positive contribution to our lives?

In a very clear and single word, “yes.” But how?

If we want to survive, we have to prepare ourselves for death. We have to do this by facing our own existence and discovering the meaning of our life.

The meaning of life can never be found by analyzing the parts. Because meaning never arises from a single cause. Meaning is created by the human being who is above all the parts.

In other words, man himself creates the meaning of his own life. But sometimes it is not as easy as it sounds. One has to search to find it.

Existential Therapy, on the other hand, builds its field of study on the individual's confrontation with the conflicts arising from the consequences of his or her existence.

Existential therapy, which works on topics such as death, freedom, loneliness and meaninglessness, invites us to a journey about the meaning of life.

- Intern Psychological Counselor Ömer Faruk Utar