I've spoken of this before, but since I'm having trouble locating the post I'll do it again.
About twenty years ago I was still living with my parents. On one occasion, I was fixing myself a corned beef sandwich prior to going out to the big city (Brum). In order to do this, I had to open the tin with that fiddly little key that they have. As I did so I managed to gash my hand on the metal; nothing particularly serious, but across a knuckle such that moving my fingers reopened the wound.
So there I was with my hand pouring blood under a cold tap, trying to wash out the whatever it is in corned beef that acts as an anticoagulant and feeling very annoyed at the delay in going out. All I remember is my train of thought sort of fading and drifting off into nothing, then the next thing I know is I was coming to on the floor with my mum screaming my name, as if someone was fading up the volume knob back to normal. I'd gone into shock from loss of blood and collapsed like a felled tree.
Now I'm not going to claim that I had an out of body experience or anything like that. The point that struck me is that there was literally nothing between standing at the sink and waking on the floor. If I had died in that moment, I wouldn't have been aware of it, nor had any memory of ever being alive - merely oblivion. Again, I'm not claiming any kind of revelationary insight or anything, just that it changed my perspective on death and dying such that I have no worries whatsoever about my own. All I fear about it now is the pain it will cause others - I used to lie awake some nights dreading what my Sam would go through should she wake up and find me dead beside her.
I have had other experiences over the last few years which have caused me to re-evaluate my stance somewhat, but that's outside the scope of this thread. I'll just note that today sees me set a new personal record for the number of days I've stayed alive. Tomorrow I might break that record.
About twenty years ago I was still living with my parents. On one occasion, I was fixing myself a corned beef sandwich prior to going out to the big city (Brum). In order to do this, I had to open the tin with that fiddly little key that they have. As I did so I managed to gash my hand on the metal; nothing particularly serious, but across a knuckle such that moving my fingers reopened the wound.
So there I was with my hand pouring blood under a cold tap, trying to wash out the whatever it is in corned beef that acts as an anticoagulant and feeling very annoyed at the delay in going out. All I remember is my train of thought sort of fading and drifting off into nothing, then the next thing I know is I was coming to on the floor with my mum screaming my name, as if someone was fading up the volume knob back to normal. I'd gone into shock from loss of blood and collapsed like a felled tree.
Now I'm not going to claim that I had an out of body experience or anything like that. The point that struck me is that there was literally nothing between standing at the sink and waking on the floor. If I had died in that moment, I wouldn't have been aware of it, nor had any memory of ever being alive - merely oblivion. Again, I'm not claiming any kind of revelationary insight or anything, just that it changed my perspective on death and dying such that I have no worries whatsoever about my own. All I fear about it now is the pain it will cause others - I used to lie awake some nights dreading what my Sam would go through should she wake up and find me dead beside her.
I have had other experiences over the last few years which have caused me to re-evaluate my stance somewhat, but that's outside the scope of this thread. I'll just note that today sees me set a new personal record for the number of days I've stayed alive. Tomorrow I might break that record.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
