it seemed a ruse that fear of death should be the sole motivation for living and , yet , to quell this fear made the prospect of living itself seem all the more absurd ; to extend this further , the notion of living ones life for the purposes of pondering the absurdity of living was an even greater absurdity in and of itself , which thus , by reductio ad absurdum , rendered the fear of death a necessary function of life and any lack thereof , a trifling matter rooted in self-inflicted incoherence .