Something is better than nothing

Here's Galen Strawson:

If, in any normal, non-depressed period of life, I ask myself whether I'd rather be alive than dead tomorrow morning, and completely put aside the fact that some people would be unhappy if I were dead, I find I have no preference either way.

Strawson allows that there are many people who will find this absurd, but others, he says, will think it obvious. While I won't say it's absurd, I stand with those who would prefer to be alive tomorrow morning, as well as the morning after and the one after that. Assuming no calamities overtake me, I'd even prefer to be alive towards the end of next year. Unless I've misunderstood him, Strawson's contrary view rests on the contention that by dying he would lose nothing:

My future life or experience doesn't belong to me in such a way that it's something that can be taken away from me. It can't be thought of as possession in that way. To think that it's something that can be taken away from me is like thinking... that something is taken away from an existing piece of string by the fact that it isn't longer than it is. It's just a mistake, like thinking that Paris is the capital of Argentina.

But if this is the premise and Strawson's non-preference for being alive tomorrow morning the conclusion, I fail to see how the conclusion follows from the premise. Let me concede, therefore, that my (possible) future is not a possession such that it can be lost. Why, now, can't I prefer the state in which I am, a state in which I can take a hot bath, eat an orange, read, and listen to Lyle Lovett, to a state of nothingness? Though it isn't part of his argument, Strawson refers to Epicurus's thought:

You don't mind that that you didn't exist for an eternity before you were born, so you shouldn't mind if you don't exist for an eternity after you're dead.

No, I don't mind that I didn't exist in 1893 or 1792; and I don't mind that I won't exist in 2091. But the question here isn't about what I mind, it's about what I prefer. And, other things equal, I definitely prefer that I should be alive tomorrow. To have that preference, I don't think I need to claim that I own a future in which Norman Geras still exists on 30 December 2007; all I need to be able to do is compare the two states, me-being-alive and nothingness (for me). I suppose it could be said that I'm not in a position to make the comparison since, in the nature of things, I have no experience of nothingness. But I only need to know that the experience of being something feels good whereas nothingness (for me) has a certain emptiness about it, in order to be able to prefer the former.

Imagine that someone who was in a position to do this offered you the choice between falling into a dreamless sleep for seven months and a more or less normal bundle of the activities and experiences (including ordinary sleep) that make up your life as it is now. Then, assuming that your life isn't marked by great suffering or unhappiness, it doesn't stretch credulity to think that you'd forego the seven month blot-out.