Kierkegaard had an interesting idea of death. He thought people should always think about the idea of dying and to constantly medidate about the meaning it could possibly have in order to live their life in a passionate way. By focusing on death, people would appreciate every moment of their life much more and take advantage of everyday as a journey towards self-realization.

It kind of reminds to one of /u/polkadotgirl 's posts, where she talked about the way society has become terrified of death and is addicted to seeking pleasure. People need time to reflect in order to develop healthy personalities, but culture seeks to make people distracted with a nearly violent hedonism. Kierkegaard also talked about the way a reflective society seeks to ridicule the people who try to take action by using the media, but ironically that society has come to depend on the idea of the hero. A lot of his ideas describe our modern society very well, that's one of the reasons he is my favorite philosopher. One of his themes is that because of our status as existential beings, passion is one of the things that can truly give meaning to our lives.

That violent hedonism I just described and a lot of the other traditions of modern society should be moderated with healthy amounts of reflection and the golden mean of Aristotle.