Re: How do YOU deal with almost dying?
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: shoot4fun</div><div class="ubbcode-body">After a cancer diagnosis in September I finished my last chemo on a Monday a couple of weeks ago. On Friday of that same week I went to the funeral of a friend who died from brain cancer. He was diagnosed in February this year. Mine is not a "how do you deal with almost dying" but a "why was I spared while those around me died" feeling. One must realize that we are doomed to die at our first breath. It is not about the death but the life. Make everyday count. Live as if it is your last. If you have lived with honor and dignity you will live on in those who you leave behind. </div></div>OK: I thought about it some more. The OP posed an interesting question so I'll try to answer it more seriously and in the best way that I can:
Gaugin wrote that there is salvation only in extremes. But I never raced motorcycles or climbed to achieve either salvation or an extreme. I did it to risk. Perhaps on a more visceral level I did it only to suffer - to focus on the pleasure of fighting for life. The denominations were different but the currency was always the same: Risk was experience was pleasure was life itself.
Like a firefight or sudden hand-to-hand struggle, when welcomed with an open mind what begins as terrifying becomes calming and insightful. With practice, the calmness and insight do not arrive later as some sort of euphoric after-effect but bloom in real-time during the fight. This must be the same as what top athletes feel when they enter ‘the zone’ - one stops trying to do something and instead becomes what one is doing.
After repeatedly approaching the precipice you begin to understand that you are involved in a process of exploring the choice of living versus dying: Between the irrationality of hanging-on and the sweet seductiveness of letting go.
The only real choice you ever have boils down to a simple lesson in the meaning of the term ‘Fuck You’: Fuck you, I choose to live. When you make that choice you realize that this is a phrase many people use but few truly understand.
The enduring lesson, for me, was one of perspective: Knowing that the proximity of death is a reality led me to an understanding of what is necessary to avoid making a mockery of the rest of my life.
