Many years ago I had to undergo surgery. As the doctor injected the anesthesia in me, he asked me to count backwards from 100. I don’t think I reached 98. When I woke up, the surgery was complete and I felt the throbbing pain where the incision was. I looked at the wall clock and saw that I was out for a total of 4 hours. I barely even realized that I lost 4 hours of my life. It was instantaneous, like someone spliced off a portion of a CCTV recording. It’s not even comparable to the flick of a light switch. With a light switch, the lights are on, then a split second of darkness, then the light is back on. When you get knocked out, it’s like having the lights on without realizing that at some point the lights were off. The experience is surreal.
I had an office mate who experienced a memory blackout. He did not faint or lose consciousness. He looked and acted normal. He did his morning workout, showered, dressed, drove to work, arrived at his office promptly at 9 am, then sat on his desk and went about his business. It was at 10 am when all hell broke loose at our floor. He started screaming, babbling incoherently, asking why he was here and what had happened. When I walked out of my room, I saw people trying to restrain him, telling him to sit and calm down. He was ranting that the last thing he remembered was putting on his running clothes. Apparently the gap in time made him panic.
I don’t blame him. Imagine yourself in his situation. At one point, you are lacing up your running shoes and —boom!— you are at work, dressed in office attire. I can only imagine how unnerving this would feel. Your brain could not process the two disjointed events. There is no progression, no sequence of events. You blink your eye and suddenly you are someplace else.
And this is why I laugh at movie scenes where the hero is struck by a blow to the head, knocked out, and when he regains consciousness, he knows that he was struck down. In reality, the last thing he would remember is the seconds before he was struck down. If he were walking down an alley when someone hit him, that would be the last thing he would remember. So from his perspective, he was walking and then, as if he were transported magically by Star Trek technology, he finds himself on a hospital bed with a headache. That is why some patients have to be restrained when unconscious.
When I was at school, my classmates and I would play this “game.” It’s actually quite dangerous so do not attempt this. One classmate, usually a hunky one, would hug another from behind, and then, at the count of three, squeeze tightly the way a python would squeeze its prey. Then everyone else would gang up on the classmate and push at his chest for about 10 secnds. Basically we would shut off his oxygen and render the classmate unconscious. Yes I know this was dangerous but we were a rowdy group of immature kids who did not know better. The classmate would slump to the ground and then after a few seconds he would wake up. When they did this to me (yes, I consented to it), it was both scary and exhilarating. I heard the countdown, I heard people laughing and giggling, and then I felt my torso being crunched as it it were on a vise. There was a massive weight on my chest as my classmates bore down on me as if they were pushing a heavy vehicle. The next thing I remember I was down on the floor and everyone was staring at me with naughty grins on their faces. They all burst in laughter when I awoke. I was out for about a minute, they later told me.
I think about this now because a family member recently died. He died of a heart attack. People close by recalled how he suddenly clutched his chest and collapsed. Doctors later told me that he would not have felt the heart attack. “It’s like you just lost your breath,” he said. So just like that it’s lights out and he doesn’t know it. You can’t say “Hey, I’m dead.” There’s no consciousness. There’s no processing.
I’m not a religious man. I don’t believe in heaven and hell. I don’t believe in spirits or the afterlife. I don’t believe in seeing a tunnel with a light at the end. When you die, you are dead. And when you die, you would not know you are dead.
I know this is morbid to some people, but if you realize that there is no afterlife and there is no pain and there is no realization that you are dead, then it gives you all the more reason to live life to the fullest. Someone told me that death is actually painful only to those you leave behind. A child would have lost their father. A wife would have lost her husband. A friend would have lost a friend.
If you care about the people you leave behind, then that should dictate the type of life you live and the type of risks you take.
Live life for your sake but avoid your death for theirs.
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