Life/Death

We can only know something by knowing what it is not. We know white because we know black. We know good because we know evil. But no one knows death, so do any of us know life?

Near death experiences make people famously positive and appreciative. Cancer survivors. Car accident survivors. Plane crash survivors. Hostage survivors. Suicide attempt survivors.

They lived when death stood so close that they could feel death’s breath on the back of their necks, and we've all watched the transformations.

But I and many others have never rubbed shoulders with death with any true friction, but we have experienced near death in smaller ways. Like after a hard run, when I cannot breath or fall down or stand still or move or drink water or stay away from water, when time is nothing but pain and heat and no oxygen, I literally feel like I am going to die. And it is the most alive I have ever felt. It is the same with bungee jumping or skydiving or driving over the speed limit. Flirting with the cusp of death, dancing our numb toes around the threshold, hoping we can slide one through unnoticed, hoping that we never get close.

We have always held our lives in our hands like little boxes that we did not know were there. We also do not recognize air pressure as being there even though it has been there from the womb. Every day we walk around with a column of air as deep as the sky pressing into every inch of our body, pushing us into the earth. But we do not feel a thing. We can’t, because we know no differently. It has always been there just as life has always been there. We have always held life, and only when life is threatened, violently yanked away and we catch it with the tips of our fingers, do we look down in wonder at what we are holding, seeing it for the first time. Because what has always been almost was not.

But maybe a glance around the curtain to the other side is not what makes people appreciate life. Maybe what changes a person is seeing the full view of life as never seen before. Pressed against the thin curtain, feeling the threadbare fabric rippling against your back, for the first time, you see life in panoramic view. See life for everything it contains—all the joy and wonder and beauty and all the bullshit and pain and suffering. 

And from that perspective, so close to losing it all, it is worth it. Everything.