# Painfully aware

- Link: https://www.andreidraganescu.info/2016/05/23/painfully-aware/
- Published: 2016-05-23T12:05:14+03:00
- Author: Andrei Draganescu

![](https://draganescu.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/1ca8d-1vqqvstmolvvym2egwpj34a.
jpeg)

Death is the one, single, great enemy I have.

Nothing is more important to me than death.

I have a limited timespan for existing. I will randomly meet the end of my timespan.

This timespan might be shorter than I can possibly imagine. I’m not talking about
accidents. I am talking about the genetically predetermined length of time in which
the genetically predetermined number of heartbeats will tick, the time for which
I will be awake and alive.

I like to think of death as the moment before birth. It’s very recomforting to me
to know I’ve been there before, there in non existence. This way death becomes known.
It’s the unknown that’s scary, because I can’t predict a future full of unknown.

Death as the time before birth is not a known _subject_, it is a known _state_. 
But for me, that is good enough.

I am filled with regret, but, unlike the popular wisdom, I have come to the conclusion
that regret is the natural result of this “life” experiment. I will die full of 
regrets, and I am fine with that.

Regret is the sorry for negated actions: wishing to have done something else, which
means negating what I actually did. Apparently I exist on a path made of many probabilistic
collapses, all making only one way possible, only one action at a time allowed, 
therefore regret is natural: I cannot experience two choices with two outcomes. 
Only one. Only me.

I would like to hold myself in a state where, if by any chance I get a moment of
hyper lucidity, before the pitch black of death sets in I will not feel sorry. Any
kind of sorry is what I strive not to be when I die. Not being sorry at all in the
final moment though, means knowing myself perfectly and entirely before that moment.
And while regret can be mitigated by intelligence, all the other kinds of sorry 
take a lot more consideration before I can make peace with them.

I would like to leave some meaning behind. Meaning is the only thing that survives
beyond a human’s death. But I also try not to cling on to that, instead I try to
be ready to let go. I find the hardest is to let go of my scars and scratches, of
my bruises, of the blood that spilled from my veins, of the bumps and hurts, of 
the tears and screams, of the revelations, epiphanies and amazing laughs, of the
look in my eyes, that look in my eyes which changes every year, getting deeper, 
farther and more detached. What were all they for? As my body is to be returned 
to the countless armies of molecules roaming reality, what is the me in I for?

Death fascinates me. Sorry, I know, it is not something we like to think about. 
But it is there, right? Right in your face. It’s not like you can ignore it, right?
It fascinates me because I wonder all the time: what is it?

The “what” describes substance. One is pressured to find substance in life, but 
in death? Is death anything, anyway? Does death have substance?

There are only two options to consider here. It either has substance and hence it
is something that extends the concept of life, or it doesn’t and it only is a short
word for the failure of life to preserve state.

If death is the last drop of resilience, then it is a pity.

Death is sometimes waiting for us to settle down with the idea and other times it
is too bored of eternity, to wait on a mere blip of living to grasp it’s abyss. 
Sudden or patient, enlightening or dooming, death is present from birth in every
cell of our body. We die and, most likely, we’ll never _come_ back. But will we 
ever “be” back?

Could we “be” back? I, once in a meditation, envisioned this thin sheet of darkness.
It was made of all the minds of all the aware beings: from dog to man, from cat 
to woman. There on this sheet of darkness all the minds rested before they were 
snatched back. I wished to know for sure this dimension of consciousness exists.
That consciousness dimension must be contiguous, a non discrete function of complexity,
which any living creature accesses. Everything has consciousness, just a different
one, a different complexity, a different encoded experiences. Of course, there is
very little chance to probe such a dimension. Upon death your mind remains in a 
dark suspended state where nothing occurs. It stays there until another brain snatches
it out of non existence. Death therefore is quite easy to grasp then. There is nothing
in death, but then you’re not completely lost, you are gone, but you are not gone.

But really. That above is just another way to say reincarnation. Pseudoscience time,
snake oil and belief systems.

> When I understood that _nobody knows anything_ life got a new vibe. Especially
> the bad part. The clutch of the anguish became colder and stronger. But also the
> freedom became more free …

I was never free until I looked defiantly at death, but then the freedom I found
evaporated all the meaning I so carefully crafted.