7:00am on a cold winter’s morning in late June, saw me travel in to the Austin hospital, up to the fifth floor, to prepare for major surgery. Strange to be in a large hospital and there’s not crowds of people on the move.
After getting myself sorted they popped me on a trolley and wheeled me through cold empty corridors into a brightly lit room filled with the disturbingly cheerful anaesthetics team.
I wonder if anaesthetists are trained in masking their work with humour. Dr Phil, with his broad Kiwi accent tells me we’re going to be partying and he’s going to make me the best cocktail ever. “If you could ask, what would you want me to get you?”
I furrow my brow to think: “Hmmm, what should I choose?” — And instantly — like time-machine fast — it’s mid-afternoon and there’s a crowd of out-of-focus, blurry faces and beeping machines asking me very loudly if I’m OK — And here's me still trying to sort my bar-order for Dr Phil.
It’s a surreal experience to be out cold to anaesthetics, very different to nodding off for a good night’s sleep.
To go to sleep often means you’re sort of conscious as the hours tick by. You doze off, you stir to the sound of possums grunting outside in the trees. You dream, you turn over, you wake up to check the time, you feel warm or cold and so on, you lie half-awake enjoying those last few moments before the alarm clock goes of.
But anaesthesia is more like death, I think. One moment you are totally awake; the very next moment, maybe a few hours or even a whole day has gone past and you have absolutely no awareness at all, of the moments you’ve missed. It all goes past in an instance.
And for me, through that time, lengthy complicated surgery had taken place. My heart and lungs were paused and a machine kept me alive. My body temperature was lowered several degrees and my chest was cut open and a key artery was pruned and repaired — and all of it, from my perspective, happened in the blink of an eye.
I suspect part of our trepidation about death is just that. Consciousness of time flowing past ceases, like being under anaesthesia One minute, or maybe a millennium goes by in an instant. Kingdoms might rise and fall, ice-ages come and go, generations of our descendants fly past and our gravestone crumbles into dust — from our unconscious perspective — it’s all in the blink of an eye!
The time, the few short years of conscious living activity are so short compared to the endless passage of unconscious time.
The ancient writers of scripture noticed this:
Psalms puts it: “Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered— how fleeting my life is. 5 You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand. My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath.” Psalm 39:4-5 NLT
Job reflects: ”Mortals born of woman are of few days and full of trouble. They spring up like flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure." Job 14:1-2
Koheleth notes: “The living at least know they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward, nor are they remembered. 6 Whatever they did in their lifetime—loving, hating, envying—is all long gone. They no longer play a part in anything here on earth,” (Ecc 9:5-6 NLT)
I think God gives us nudges through life to remind us that our time here is transient and brief. Virgil wrote that classic Latin quote: “Tempus Fugit” - “Time flees away.”
What will we do with the days remaining us? How will you and I live intentionally today? And then again tomorrow, if tomorrow comes.
Paul from Nero’s prison in Rome says: ”Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” Eph 5:15-16
Psalms urges us to gather wisdom: “… teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12
Wendell Berry reflects on finding peace in nature, disconnecting from the anxieties of modern life, and connecting with the serenity of the wild:
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For the time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
