Something Special
About 5/6 years ago, one of my best friends bought me the book Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder. A couple of weeks ago he reminded me about it, and this weekend I managed to find it in amongst all my books in the loft… so I started reading it for a second time. It’s a pretty amazing book of philosophy. As I began reading, I recalled the moment I read a particular paragraph 5/6 years ago…
I often find myself trying to remember what kind of a person I was before I was diagnosed/made aware of my illness. The last two years has obviously transformed me as a person. Sometimes I wonder how the ‘old me’ would react in particular situations. I believe it fair to say that my methods of thinking, my beliefs and my perspectives haven’t changed too much. But I don’t think that anyone who’s been through what I have could say it hasn’t changed them for the better. What I’ve experienced over the last 2 years is a process of enlightenment, I guess it’s like a heightened state of awareness - for everything.
I remember when I was a little girl and I learnt that one day I’d die. I used to think about it now and again, and every time I did it evoked quite an intense feeling…perfectly described in this paragraph from the opening chapter of Sophie’s World…
As Sophie started to think about being alive, she began to realise that she would not be alive forever. I am in the world now, she thought, but one day I shall be gone.
Was there a life after death? It was not long since Sophie’s Grandmother had died. For more than six months Sophie had missed her every single day.
How unfair that life had to end!
Sophie stood on the gravel path, thinking. She tried to think extra hard about being alive as to forget that she would not be alive forever. But it was impossible. As soon as she concentrated on being alive now, the thought of dying also came into her mind. The same thing happened the other way around: only by conjuring up an intense feeling of one day being dead could she appreciate how terribly good it was to be alive. It was like two sides of a coin that she kept turning over and over. And the bigger and clearer one side of the coin became, the bigger and clearer the other side became too.
You can’t experience being alive without realising that you have to die, she thought. But it’s just as impossible to realise that you have to die without thinking about how incredibly amazing it is to be alive.
Sophie remembered Granny saying something like that the day the doctor told her she was ill. ‘I never realised how rich life was until now,’ she said.
How tragic that most people had to get ill before they understood what a gift it was to be alive.
I can’t think about death like I used to as a little girl, or like I used to before I learnt that my illness will ultimately kill me so early on in my pre-illness-envisaged ‘lifetime’. The feelings, emotions and thought processes I have and experience at this trying time in my life are unique to me… and I think that’s quite special.
