TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO DIE...

 

When you're young, you have absolutely no concept of never having
existed. On an intellectual level (if you ever felt disposed to consider the
matter), you know there was a time when you weren't around, but you
can't truly conceive of what it must've been like because non-existence
is a difficult if not impossible state to imagine.

 

Think of any period in mankind's history from before you were
born; the Old West, the Victorian Era, the 1920s or '30s - whatever.
Even 'though you never experienced them, you almost feel as if you
have, thanks to history books, old photographs, artists' impressions, TV
shows, movies, etc. And because you can't remember your beginning,
it seems as if you never actually had one and that you've been around
forever. At least, that's what it seems like to me.

Consequently, when I was a teenager of 14, I subconsciously
laboured under the impression that I had always been. (Although the
same perception also applies to any point in my childhood from when
I first became aware of my surroundings.) It's unlikely that I was alone
in that regard, and it's surely the same for 14 year-olds today. It's only
because fourteen years to someone of my age passes so quickly that I
finally realized just how inconsequential such a period of time actually
is. I've got things lying around the house which have never been out
of the wrappers since I bought them that are older than that.

As you inexorably inch closer to that time when the condition of non-
existence threatens to once again engulf you, it's a prospect you tend to
contemplate far more than you did (if at all) in your younger days. Finally,
you begin to be able to nearly catch a glimmer of what extinction might
be like, and the prospect isn't a pleasant one. I remember waking up in
hospital one day after a procedure which required my unconsciousness,
and was alarmed to find I had no recollection of even a half-sleep-like
state in between being knocked out and coming to.

As I said, no half-remembered thoughts, vague dreams, or hovering on
the edge of awareness to connect me to my pre-anaesthetised self - only
an absolute absence of even the slightest sense of continuity between the
two conditions. It was then that I realised what oblivion must be like. It was
as if I'd been dead for however many hours I'd been out, and, although my
body was still functioning, as far as my mind was concerned, there was no
discernible difference between death and unconsciousness.

So, death is not merely a case of not waking up, it's also not
even being aware of going to sleep or being asleep at any stage in the
process. Shakespeare was wrong; there are no dreams in the sleep of
death, only a blackness and silence from which we never awaken -
an eternal nothingness, an everlasting night.

 That's no doubt why I often find myself wishing I was only 14
again. The illusion of no beginning (and, by extension, no ending),
while temporary, is a comforting and necessary notion, otherwise we'd
probably abandon our journey before we were very far into it. After
all, what's the point of taking a road to nowhere?

Come to think of it, I wouldn't even mind being half that age. Now,
if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to work on that elixir of life I'm
developing. I just can't afford to relax if I want to be here in 2113.

******

We are but older children, dear,
Who fret to find our bedtime near.

Lewis Carroll.