Death
One of the things that hit me years ago, was the realization of the inevitability of death. I was overwhelmed by the mere thought of its permanency over time, as sadly, no one has ever returned from it after being gone. We may desire to cheat death, we may do it once in a lifetime – maybe a couple of more times – but what remains a certainty, is that we will all die someday. Forever.
Shocked? Yeah, I hear you. The thought of not being involved in this life forever, is one that haunts us like a terrible nightmare; an unthinkable conception; something we never think about because it may overtake us with fear and painful ideas. But again, avoiding this, will not stop it from happening, so you better bet the sun will die out before you can outlive it.
The rude awakening produced by the understanding of this is one that rattled me to my bones, when I shook the hand of death, twice.
Enter the Grim Reaper
In what many of us consider a “normal” pattern of life, being kidnapped twice before you are 20, looks like a highly unfortunate coincidence; unless, of course, you were brought up or lived in a city like Caracas, my hometown.
Decades of erratic public policies have turned this valley into a dangerous place, and if you expose yourself too much, you may end up being very close to dying without even knowing it until it is too late. Take a wrong turn in some parts of town and your chances for being mugged escalate by ten-fold. You don’t stay sharp at night, you may end up being a victim.
Of course, wisdom and mindfulness come from developing years of experiences and moments that brought education and understanding of many things; but when I was 14, none of this stuff ever came to mind; I was just being a teenager, carefree and happy. Until it hit me.
Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter play “Charades” with the Grim Reaper on “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey”. 1991. MGM Studios.
One afternoon, as I was walking to my house, a couple of men pushed me in as I opened the door. They started beating me; they tied me to the toilette and pushed the barrel of their guns to my ribs. They asked me where the money was concealed, then gagged me and started going all over the house. They took everything, even TV and phone wires. When they left, they threatened me with coming back for me if I decided to pursue them or press charges.
A few years later, when I was 17, I was walking along with a girlfriend of mine when suddenly, a small red car hit the brakes and a guy jumped us with a gun. I tried to resist and he kicked us inside the car, where we were driven on the outskirts of the city for 6 hours. A question followed by a punch; a question followed by a punch, and so on, until they freed us near a dam on the western mountains of the city. I ran and ran away, waiting for a bullet to hit me on the back, but I guess they spared my life. A few hours later and with the help of some locals, I was back home, safe, sound and scared.
As you may probably understand, both events created a reverberating effect on the way I now see life, and death as well. If one thing can be drawn from such extreme experiences, is that life is a very precarious thing. It can be taken away or it can cease to exist without much effort. Slide on a banana peel and you may find yourself cracking your skull wide open against the kitchen floor of your own home. When your life is not within your control (and believe me, most of the time it isn’t), you start realizing – among many things – that perception can be a very deceiving thing.
As I grew older too, the thoughts and memories of these events kept piling up over the years; but they weren’t events that scared me anymore but rather more the type of memories and experiences that gives us a specific learning. You see, in both occasions my life – or my fate – was not decided or called by me. For the long hours in which I had a gun pointed at my ribs or my skull, the decision on whether I was killed or raped did not belong to me but my captors. I had no call or intervention on these matters, and it was only by their own accord that I was to live.
Take nothing for granted
This shocking discovery, took me deeper into the conception I had about death. Until these two occasions abruptly interrupted my upbringing, death was a distant and almost unknown concept, but now, it was a real and close event. Even worse, it presented itself in ugly and painful ways, and again, I had no control over this. Right after I got into my house when I was 14, or when I strolled down a street with my friend when I was 17, I lost all control of the following events. I couldn’t avoid being pushed inside my house to be tied to a toilette, gagged and robbed, in the same way I couldn’t help being kicked inside that red car and kidnapped for over six grueling hours.
What I could have done, though, is a different story. I could have stayed quiet and obey their orders, as I did when I was 14, but I guess the rage from the first event made me react in a way I would regret seconds later. If I had only decided to stay calm and wait for them to take our stuff and leave, but instead I decided to react on a feisty way and ended up kidnapped. My reaction – on both occasions – probably swayed the result each time. In the first one I stayed cool and it was over soon; on the second though, I put up a fight and the experience lasted longer and turned even more painful.
Today, well, things are different. At 40 years of age, a milestone has been reached and I am picking the harvest of my yesteryears. No longer do I feel afraid of the past but grateful of the learnings I have been able to use to make my life, better and happier. As the survivor of near-death experiences, I can truly state that nothing should be taken for granted; and that time, love and death are engines of our lives, are as important as the oxygen we breath, the air that fills our lungs, and the water that refreshes our thirst for happiness and fullness.
Andreína Maneiro