Please don't be unnecessarily alarmed. I am not suffering from a mortal disease or from a cancer. I am not going to die - yet. I am simply referring to that day, way back in childhood; a day I can recall with alarming and rather frightful clarity, when I realised, I would die one day. I think I was seven years old. Though I can't be too sure. Do you remember the day you found out that you were gonna die? I'm not sure if this is a common theme / experience that everybody goes through - or whether it happened just to me. I suspect it's common.
Anyway, I clearly remember that day when I was about seven. It was as if a bolt of lightning had struck me. I don't know what initiated it, all I remember is being alone, and then suddenly without warning, realising that one day, I would die. And it made me cry. But the tears were not for my demise. The tears were for the eventual and certain death of my parents. It was their assured departure from my life, that frightened me - my mum mostly. What would I do? How would I cope when she was gone? And I still retain that faithful day in memory. The day when the shrivelled old arm of mortality touched me with its cold and rigor mortis flesh. The day I learnt that the world could also be a scary place and not all playground funland. It was the day I grew up in the universe. Grew up Almost, into a man. For after that moment of lightning-bolt realisation; once the tears had dried, I went out into the garden to play. It is what separates us from the other members of the animal kingdom. For no other animals; dolphins, chimps, bonobo monkeys, squids; for all their famed intelligences, not a single one of them bury their dead. Because they never find out that one day they will die.
Anthropologists know that mankind made a Great Leap Forward approximately 50,000 years ago. It is the first time man started using language; and the earliest cave paintings in France date from this period. But most importantly, this period is marked by the first instances of human burial practices. It's when we first began to bury our dead. My Great Leap Forward occurred when I was seven years old. A mighty leap forward! A magnificent 5-steps-in-one-bound jump into the unknown!
It's an arresting thought, but I think that at that moment, when I was seven, I became self-aware. It's hard to prove but I think, that that self awareness manifested itself, as a sudden lightning-bolt realisation of my mortality. To be self aware. To know you are alive - you must know you will one day die. Otherwise without death how can you know you are alive? And I remember it! That moment! When a light-bulb switched on inside me. The day I found out I was gonna die.
Did this light bulb switch on suddenly? With the press of a switch? Off and then On? Off - On, Off - On. Or, from the day I arrived screaming into the world, was it more gradual, like a dimmer switch getting brighter and brighter and brighter? Now we're straying into deeper territory where the grass is longer with more tangles. This blog entry could grow the necessary legs and crawl all over this mountainous region - It could even grow a set of wiiings (Red Bull gives you wiiings!) and soar, but now is not the time for wings or legs or soaring. Perhaps some other time. Now is the time to make myself a cup of delicious Monmouth coffee and, if I'm lucky, to find something pleasant and sweet in the kitchen, to put in my mouth.
_________
