Cave Series 7: Two minutes to death…

The other day the floor of the cave came to light. It was sandy and dry, and had remains of human suffering sticking out of it… I saw skeletons, various backbones half buried in the sand, some empty rib cages, a few nondescript bones, all quietly mixed in with the sand. They were old, worn and grey – the refuse, maybe, of human killings, murders and wars… or perhaps just the natural death of people like me who can’t get out of the cave…

Many of us want excitement, adventure, entertainment… anything to take us out of our personal and societal ennui. But we don’t realise that at any given moment, we’re only two minutes away from death. Your death and my death could come at any time, but if just one simple thing happens, we’re dead in less than two minutes.

Take a deep breath and hold it. Hold it for a minute; you’re already bursting to let it out. Let it out; let it all out, to the last drop of air. Then hold your breath again, and you’ll be heaving your guts for air. You start blacking out, and if you can continue and if you do black out, air will rush in again as soon as you lose consciousness. Because Life wants to continue in us. It has to continue.

But if air is taken away from us suddenly, in two minutes we’re dead. So life already is the adventure we’re seeking. We’re just unconscious of it and take it for granted. Our complacency and our society protect us, and we take refuge in all of the delights of civilisation to keep death at bay, and to keep our minds from thinking about it. But if we become aware of the marvel of Life, even for a moment, we are no longer afraid of death, because it helps us to get things in perspective, and makes us even more alive. And so we have more time to try to get out of this cave…At least another two minutes maybe.