The dark water of the Wye is rushing by, flowing around the many smooth rocks and ledges beneath the surface to sustain an urgency that has been there for millennia. In the August sun, camping families play joyously in these small rapids, leaping in with screams of abandon, and now and then a swimmer or a kayaker will surge past, the surprise on their face telling the story of a sudden acceleration as the river picks up speed.
Here comes my daughter, a yard or two behind my wife, and as they pass the point where the river bed drops, her laughter is suddenly gone as the swirling tide drags her sideways and under. Back she comes to the surface, her arms fighting the dragging forces around her, but the look in her eyes is no longer of fun, and courage. Instead they pierce me with a pure terror, and she drops again, her forearms slapping against the crest of these strange currents.
I hook her out, the touch of her stretching hand taking an eternity to land, and we hug on the rocks as she heaves with emotion. In these moments, we start to come to terms with this glimpse of our fragility, and in the days that follow, the intensity drifts away as we try to rationalise what happened, and plot to never be so exposed again. But the truth is that such moments are with us in every single day of our lives, danger lurking beneath the surface like those hidden currents, and yet we still live as time is on our side.
I’ve seen such glimpses of my own mortality before, in a variety of circumstances, and while those memories stand out in my mind alongside the other markers posts, such as weddings or the birth of a child, I increasingly feel as if I am missing the point in the way I’m reflecting on them.
A near death experience can be anything from sobering to life-changing, but in the days that follow this drama, I start to consider that the real lesson of these pivotal lessons is not about the detail of the specific circumstance, but of the awareness that we show in the face of the sudden urgency. Hardwired into us is the adrenaline of the “fight and flight” response, and the single-purposed focus of both my daughter and I in the split-seconds of that frantic episode is precious, rare, neglected.
From the cinematic recollection of that afternoon, and of a couple of similiar scrapes of my own, has emerged a new way of looking at this life. Instead of putting these priceless moments into some “Near Death Experiences” category, I have instead started to try and cultivate that sharp awareness in the moments when our mortality is less evident.
There is, in the panoramic of life unfolding around us, the chance to train ourselves to be present in the lesser moments, in the mundane scenes, so that we might harness that wonderful reminder of our finite existence and as a result be more alive in the day to day. I watch my breath and look for writing material as I go through my day, knowing that in the early morning that follows, I will stare at a blank page and need something to write that makes me feel alive, as if the day before was worthwhile, its gifts harvested.
In doing this, and dropping back into the companion pieces of the Stoics, or David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water”, or these very personal Near Death Experience memories, I have to come to notice how we can instead find Near Life Experiences in every moment of our day and night.
A few times a day, if I am lucky, I will remember to take a moment to just look at a landscape, or into the blue eyes of my darling children, or to just listen to the noise of chattering birds above the hum of traffic. That strange, bewildering feeling of glimpsing a deeper value in the ordinary transactions of life has become more important to me than the details of my life itself.
Life rushes at us like the rapids of the Wey but we can still find those twin messages of impermanence and privilege when we are awake enough, open enough to look for it. For the mysterious path we are on does not linger in classification, putting one experience above another in some mortal league table, but instead holds, in every waking moment, the same abundant opportunity to wake up, and engage.
This glittering prize lives in every moment, mostly unclaimed, but perhaps today I will encounter a moment or two when I am not elsewhere, or inside my head, and instead find another nugget of Near Life Experience to savour. I’ll be on the lookout…
