Tag: dying

A Good Day to Die

After my seizure experience I am attempting to pick up the pieces and reconcile my two very different experiences of near death.

If someone hears about a brain tumor most people would think it’s the end. A seizure, on the other hand, happens fairly often. But for me, it’s the seizure experience that has me seeking out ways to cope with the trauma.

My brain tumor experience was full of messy emotions, mystical experiences, and saying goodbye to everyone. It was long and drawn out. I waited five days in a hospital room for the surgery. I had Paige by my side nearly every minute. My parents were there, I had visitors from church who brought flowers, and we had family drop everything to take care of our kids for what ended up being my nine day hospital stay. I really felt like I left everything there. I was full of gratitude and awe looking back at my life and what I had experienced. There was no bitterness, no regret, no desperation for anything more. Before being wheeled off to the operating room, I was held by my wife and my parents, and I told them where they could find me if I left my body. It was sweet, serene, and peaceful.

The seizure experience was the exact opposite end of the spectrum. There was no build up. There was no time to contemplate. It was a futile struggle of myself against my own body, failing to cooperate but knowing that something was very wrong with my brain. I flailed at a window in front of Paige and my children, asking for help, and then fell into a bush and went to black. 

That’s that.

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An Experiment in Dying

Kevin Kelly, photo by Christopher Michel.

When talking with friends and family about what I’ve been through, the topic of my radical perspective shift comes up over and over. And I always say that “staring down the barrel of that gun” or “dangling on the edge of that cliff” or “looking straight into the abyss” will do that do a person. But I am also quick to follow up with the qualifier that a person can’t force that experience onto themselves. It just has to happen— and dying will do that. 


In my much loved (now dog-eared and marginalia-covered) book Falling Upward by Richard Rohr, he writes the same sentiment— that one cannot force the second phase of their spirituality to happen. It just does. But he also mentions that it seems common for it to happen to people sometime around their mid-40s. 


I have heard of someone who did manage to simulate their own dying experience and come away changed forever as a result. Kevin Kelly is former editor-at-large at WIRED magazine and has his hands in a long list of fascinating projects. He’s written several books about technology and the future. I’ve read his latest futurist book, The Inevitable, and recommend it if you’re interested in things like what automation will look like, AI, and the singularity. At the heart of his futurist predictions there are very rooted and optimistic outlooks on what we as humans will learn from our own advancements. To paraphrase his take on automation, when robots learn to do everything we do and obviate the need for work, the result will be that we will learn, deeply, what it is to be human. 


The following summary of this story was made into the very first episode of This American Life. He also reflects on it during a long-form interview on The Tim Ferriss Show podcast.

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