I would first like to say that I’m approaching this subject in reply to a discussion regarding an operation that I had last year, involving narcosis.
For as long as I remember, I’ve feared death. I had perceived the biological clock as a daunting magnet dragging me ever closer to the unpleasant event. However, flipping things up and down brings me to an epiphany, and a new belief. The essence of depression: to yearn.
An example: It is not the loss of your dear ones that hurts, but the proceeding yearning for your time together. It is not the fire in your home that hurts you, but the following yearning for the home you had before the flames devoured it. It’s not the sitting in the wheelchair that hurts, it’s the longing for the time where you could walk.
This theory can be applied to life itself. It’s not death that hurts, but the proceeding yearning for the time where you were alive… and here we stop.
The philosopher Descartes once said: “I think, therefore I am.”
Science suggests that narcosis is a condition in which one is kept in a borderline state between life and death (comatose). As far as I understand, narcosis differs from traditional sleep. During traditional sleep, one has a sense of time and enacts dreaming. During narcosis, one’s mind becomes entirely idle, and all mental actuality becomes subject to the hands of the anesthesiologist.
In other words; if we revere the axiom “I think – therefore I am”, then I was literally “not” during the operation’s 2 hour endurance, simply because I didn’t think – I didn’t even dream.
When death occurs, our bodies die and our existence vanishes – essentially because we’ve ceased thinking.
In order to sense pain, physical or psychological, a consciousness is needed. It’s essential to think, it’s essential to be. That’s why narcosis is used, to suppress consciousness and be able to conduct extremely painful operation without discomforting the patient.
I believe my state of narcosis provided me a taste of death. It’s an absence of consciousness. Without consciousness you cannot yearn. You can’t long for life, because you are, for all intents and purposes “not”.
Fear derives from a warning of possible pain.
We fear our relationship will end or our home will burn, because of the pain of loss. As humans, we’re always and forever tied to what may be – sometimes enough that we overlook what we have now.
But why fear death when you’re unable to miss life?
I certainly don’t hope there is a life after death – at least not in a conscious state.
Imagine resting in a ghostly condition on a churchyard longing for life or going to heaven missing your friends and family from Earth.
I truly hope there is just one life.
”Give me the joy of life and I’ll give you the peace of death.”