The Experience

I am at a point where it's appropriate to tok about the experience that prompted me to reassess my life and reexamine reality. While there are other events in my life shaping my outlook and which, inevitably, affected my interpretation of events, I will limit myself to this one.

When I was in hospital for treatment, I needed to spend a few weeks as an in-patient. I shared a room with four men - all in their old age. I'm mo stranger to being in hospital but it's never a happy occasion. Worse still, it was the holiday season and you sense a change of mood as people celebrated Christmas and the New Year. And there I was in my room, partly bored and partly frustrated, as I was stuck inside. It didn't help to see that my room 'mates' didn't stay for long as they were either transferred or sent home.

During the last days of my stay, an elderly patient was brought in from intensive care. He was still in a bad state and was obviously pain and discomfort as he spent hours on end shrieking, screaming and swearing. Nights were particularly difficult as I would be awakened by hellish shriek follow by more terrifying shouts and more cursing. To this day, I feel an uneasy feeling when I recall that night. By the morning, the man seemed to have quieted down and little commotion was to be heard from his bed.

In the afternoon, the alarm belles sounded after a nurse checked on him. I was preparing for a nap I think when the nurse rushed for assistant and a defibrillator was brought in a desperate attempt to resuscitate the mam. The man was certified dead. However, the man had probably been dead for some time already. And I and the two other men who shared his room hadn't noticed. Indeed, we were relieved that we were having a quiet afternoon after a hard night kept awake by incessant and unsettling, cries. Cries, it would turn out, where of a dying man.

I was always aware of the possibility of death, but I was never so close to death as I was on that day. Never did I imagine how silently the hand of death could strike. I was shaken after I realized that a man had died and I was none the wiser. That life could end so unremarkably. That all of a sudden, a life ended after a futile struggle, yes, but still... Even if you know that life has to end, you cling to the delusion that you'll live forever. And that only natural but at the point when you are displaced of your usual routine, you cannot help but search for answers.

We want some kind of explanation, a hope and a purpose to our lives. We find comfort in religion, science, art or any way that justifies our existence. Otherwise, we can attempt to escape from death by forgetting or else live our lives indulging in self-pity and melancholy. Either way, we are avoiding to deal with an everyday reality - even if, in our clinical world, death tends to happen behind closed doors and masked by euphemistic phrases.

There... I told you! My experience. Nothing out of the ordinary. But yet, for that man, and for all those who came before and since who died,
It's a unique and singular event. It is unrepeatable in this life and what follows death is a matter of faith and speculation. But even when we claim that there's nothin after death, we are afraid and perhaps more if we don't believe in a reality beyond.

I've been here before. I thought I was satisfied with my life. But being a silent witness to a man's last hours. Being so indifferent to a dying man, until it was finished. To die alone like that. Perhaps riddled with anger and regret. But who am I to judge? And, what about my life, where was it leading me to?

It's here that I turned my attention inwards and reached within for an answer...

Being in Time

The question that I'll be asking here a lot is related to being or to who we are. I have been asking that question early on in my childhood. I would gaze at the heavens at night wondering at how little our planet was when compared to the vastness of the universe, the stars and the unknown beyond. And yet, I was here. Was there a reason?

I think these concerns grew stronger as I was painfully aware that this life would someday end. It was not a reassuring to realize, as a boy, that tomorrow may never come. That there will be a day when. When, what exactly? And even if we try to forget, the life we have today may end at any moment and without warning. That is life, or death really.

At the same time, this realization makes life ever more precious and our experience as human beings unique. We often view ourselves as if we were immortal and indestructible. As if we are separate from others. Indeed, we are bold enough to define ourselves as individuals. But, in reality, do we know who we are? Or do we think we know?

Let's face it, most of us do not choose our first names. I was called Gordon. And that name itself has a history and a legacy. I didn't choose my parents and didn't choose to be born. Even if I'm grateful of having my parents and of being alive. I didn't choose to be born in Malta. I could go on forever.

Neither do the ways I define myself can be regarded as purely my own. I am a son to my parents, a brother to my siblings, etc. But what would this mean if a family didn't exist? I am an employee, a student and a disabled person involved in activism. But what about the social, political and cultural leaps essential for these ways to describe ourselves to be possible? And, without the Internet and social media, would being a blogger make any sense?

And consider the millions of factors and conditions that were crucial in making now possible. From the fact that my parents decided to have you and me, that they survived these years to choosing each other. Not to mention their linage back to pre-history - even back to the first forms of life on planet Earth. What about the creation of the Earth itself? With the perfect conditions for life, including the position of our planet to the sun and the fact we have a moon.

And yet, it doesn't end there. The genesis of the universe with its matter and energy - all coming from a point so early in history that it defies our understanding. We may logically discount all these factors to mere luck. We may come up with a theory,or even a law, explaining everything that happened to the last detail.

Yet, these answers would go only so far as explaining How it happened, but not come close in enlightening us on why it happened. Ultimately, scientific enquiry on its own will not answer an essential question we were asking ourselves since we gained self-awareness.

What is the meaning of life?