denial
"How sweet it must be to let go of the colossal burden of a self-dominating, self-forming life, to relax one's grip on one's own center, and to yield passively to a superordinate power and authority--and what joy in yielding: the comfort, the trust, the relief in one's chest and shoulders, the lightness in one's heart, the sense of being sustained be something larger, less fallible. With his own distinctive problems, man is the only animal who can often willingly embrace the deep sleep of death, even while knowing that it means oblivion."
--Ernest Becker