Near- Death Experiences

Some years ago, in our session on Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales, we discussed the body's natural physiological response when life is on the line: the amygdala detects danger; the adrenal glands kick in; catecholamines constrict blood vessels and affect the firing of nerve cells; the adrenal cortex releases cortisol, invading the hippocampus, amping up fear and affecting the memory system; heart rate rises; breathing speeds up; sugar is dumped into the metabolic system; the oxygen and nutrients distribution shifts for immediate strength -- you're on afterburner and all this occurs before you can even “think.”

So many accidents, so little time: rafting; flying; climbing; adrift at sea; even a walk in the woods. The very term adventure, almost by definition, suggests danger, voluntarily faced. The activities cited in the book range in risk from the barely foreseeable to the patently suicidal. The threshold question, then, is what might even trigger the initial decision to undertake the risk in the first place e.g. the snowmobiler taking a run at the slope that any rational analysis would deem to be an invitation to an avalanche. Perhaps the answer lies in the Evel Knievel philosophy that life takes on meaning only in its relation to death. 

We might then ask what possible lessons can be extracted from an actual near-death experience, the subject of our focus article ( We Learn Nothing). Following a stab wound to the throat, the author had a euphoric year free from unhappiness and self-consciousness and, in fact, declared the unsuccessful murder to have been one of the best things that ever happened to him. He began brewing dandelion tea in a big Amish crock and reported (like his terminal father before him) an amused indifference to the serious business of the world. He approvingly cites Winston Churchill's aphorism about the exhilaration of being shot at without result.     

We might share any of our own near-death experiences and what they have ultimately meant. Perhaps they have opened the pathway to the forever altered perspective of eternal grace. On the other hand, perhaps recall of such incidents in such lofty terms, as the author's account, may be deemed to be slightly delusional. He reflects back on each "stabbiversary" for valuable life lessons. The title of the piece gives a hint to his conclusions.

The bigger lesson, though, lies with the simple embrace that life is finite, something the stoics  termed "memento mori" i.e. "meditating on your mortality is only depressing if you miss the point. It is in fact a tool to create priority and meaning. It's a tool that generations have used to create real perspective and urgency. To treat our time as a gift and not waste it on the trivial and vain. Death doesn't make life pointless but rather purposeful." 

Happy Stabbiversary.