Solipsism.

One of my character traits is a tendency towards solipsism, the belief that my own mind is all that exists. I say that I tend towards solipsism rather than I truly believe that solipsism is true. I would say rather that my experience is such that my mind is to me substantially more real than the external world. In the end what matters to me is what goes on in my mind.

A consequence of this is a complete disinterest in what might happen after I am dead. While I don't have the firm belief that the Universe will cease to exist upon my death, the experience will be identical to it ceasing to exist. In practical terms, if you can't tell the difference between two eventualities, they are the same eventuality.

Therefore I have never worried about any legacy, or whether the world will be left as a better place once I've gone. I worry about whether the world is a better place because I'm in it, but not what I will be thinking on my deathbed. I think this is one of the great tragedies of how humanity measures the worth of lives, that is in terms of where that person is at the point of their death. I don't care about my funeral, I think the sensible thing to do would be to find the cheapest disposal mechanism and basically forget that I existed.

One way that this tendency manifests itself is when I have a particularly vivid dream it effects me to the same extent as a "real" event, or memory. I have been having particularly vivid dreams recently, with a couple of particularly strong moments. One is a really heart-wrenching moment, which I won't describe today because I want to be cheerful, and the other is the experience of swimming with dolphins in a tropical sea. As far as I am concerned I have swum with dolphins in a warm sea under beautiful sunlight, and I'm grateful for this wonderful experience.