I have often wondered about the concept of temporary death - something that is a few stages higher than sleep and several notches lower than the final goodbye. When one gets terribly restless or confused or just plain weary, you go some place, check into a facility and talk to someone about your situation. Based on this consultation, you decide how many days you want to pop-off for - a week, a month, two years, etc. Then you soak in a large ornate bathtub with relaxing oils and scents - maybe someone gives you a footrub at that time. Slowly, you slip - inch by inch into a state of deep, dense relaxation. You feel peace the way a scrap of cloth would feel when it is trapped in a thicket in a forest. Your final breath - your life essence - is captured in a tiny jade bottle while you pass out. This essence will be kept carefully and studied to detect traces of chronic imperfections, while you, well, lay dead.
Finally, when you come back to life, (maybe there is some more soaking in a tub or a delicious massage under a thick banyan tree), you get a report. While you were out, your life essence has been analyzed and some inferences have been drawn. You are given a picture of how your life has shaped up so far - like one of those photographs in a geological survey. You are also told exactly what you need to do to change whatever you want to change. Since you have been dead all this while, you are rested and curious and can't wait to get started.
I really wish this option were available. It's not like meditating or taking a holiday. I don't think you can truly ever take 'time off' when you are still inhabiting the same body in which you are unhappy. There must be complete cessation of the routine. And since we are creatures of habits, worshippers of homeostasis - death is the only way to clamp down on the mundane.
Alternatively, maybe there could be a gambling den. People go in there to pay high-stake poker. Either you win answers to your deep questions or else you lose yourself. That's it. Yourself - whatever it might be - that's gone. You never get out again. It's sucked out of you and you just go around waiting tables in the den forever after.
Both these measures seem extreme but I don't see the point or poetry in being clueless and messed up anymore.
Finally, when you come back to life, (maybe there is some more soaking in a tub or a delicious massage under a thick banyan tree), you get a report. While you were out, your life essence has been analyzed and some inferences have been drawn. You are given a picture of how your life has shaped up so far - like one of those photographs in a geological survey. You are also told exactly what you need to do to change whatever you want to change. Since you have been dead all this while, you are rested and curious and can't wait to get started.
I really wish this option were available. It's not like meditating or taking a holiday. I don't think you can truly ever take 'time off' when you are still inhabiting the same body in which you are unhappy. There must be complete cessation of the routine. And since we are creatures of habits, worshippers of homeostasis - death is the only way to clamp down on the mundane.
Alternatively, maybe there could be a gambling den. People go in there to pay high-stake poker. Either you win answers to your deep questions or else you lose yourself. That's it. Yourself - whatever it might be - that's gone. You never get out again. It's sucked out of you and you just go around waiting tables in the den forever after.
Both these measures seem extreme but I don't see the point or poetry in being clueless and messed up anymore.
Comments
What a brilliant, brilliant idea.. Loved it and wish it was available somewhere...