Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.
In the end, living is defined by dying.
But time passes. Fear becomes a memory. Terror becomes routine; it loses its grip.
Thought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host.
I respond well to what I read of Immanuel Kant's idea that the world as we see it is absolutely a function of the way our brain works. In the modern parlance, it's an evolved machine that we carry with us.
The successful Idea travels from mind to mind, claiming new territory, mutating as it goes.