Nothing to Fear
Dear Michelle, We have never met, yet this morning i awoke thinking of you, and felt a wish to tell you a story i once told to Tracey, who was in the same situation that you are in now. Her reply is one of my treasured memories.
Even though we have never met, we are indirectly connected by what i call "economic symbiosis", although that's another story.
We are also directly connected by biology; we are kith and kin: for our genes - the things that make us who we are - are about 99% the same.
So i know how you feel.
And as if that weren't amazing enough, we are also 98.5% the same as chimpanzees!
And as if even that weren't amazing enough, we are 60% the same as flies! We have the very same basic 5-part body plan as flies, a plan drawn on the Architect of Life's drawing board by our "Hox" genes, which we share with flies. I forget the details, but they are in my book called "Living Computers: Intelligent Plastic Machines".
But there's more!... We are also 40% the same as bananas!!
Phew! Imagine that; you are 60% fly, and 40% banana. Makes you think, doesn't it?!
Like bananas and flies, we also are like Socrates, who Plato (or was it Aristotle?) claimed to be mortal, pretty much his only serious claim to fame, apart from being very annoying to the High Priests of Athens.
Your melanoma has returned, which must be very unsettling to you, which is why i want to share with you the same story i told Tracey, who also had melanoma.
It's my own experience of staring my own death right in the face, and i want to tell you, from that vivid personal experience, that death is nothing to be afraid of, even if it gets you.
It was in 1985, in early winter, at night, when we were shipwrecked off the coast of New South Wales, Australia. At the time, Bruno and i were on deck; me fighting with the mainsail, he watching me nervously from the cockpit, and seasick Alois was lying down below. Our little yacht had been, for hours, being forced backwards by a strong headwind and adverse countercurrent.
It was my fault; my navigation error; my useless seamanship; but it was Alois who paid the ultimate price for my incompetence, something for which i can never forgive myself, an eternal caveat on the piece of paper i was given 10 years later, which states "This certificate entitles the holder to sail as Master of United Kingdom pleasure yachts not exceeding 200 gross registered tons".
Back in 1985, the boat i was supposed to be delivering to Bob in Hawaii, was tipped over by a huge wave that i never even saw coming. i was flung through the air as if shot out of a cannon, then whirled around in an underwater washing machine, head over heels, over and over again, for what felt like forever. My lungs were bursting, and i toyed with the idea of just taking a gulp of water to get it over with, but then, to my astonishment, my head broke the surface.
And immediately went under again. But then came back up again, thanks to the lifejacket i was wearing.
But it wasn't good news, for a little ways ahead, exactly the way the sea was taking me, enormous waves were smashing one after another into a huge great impassive black wall. it was obvious that i too would soon be smashed into that wall, and that would be that.
i was too tired to swim, and not a good swimmer anyway. there was nothing i could do.
i fell asleep. after a while, when i awoke, the wall wasn't there any more. the lights on the shore were a long way further away than they had been.
i was being swept out to sea.
now i knew, with absolute certainty, that it was just a matter of time before the sea or one of its creatures got me.
and with this realisation came the calmness of certainty; i wasn't afraid; i knew it would happen; i was ready for it.
Of course, as you will know because i lived to tell the tale, i was wrong, but that's not the point.
None of us wants to die, but we all eventually do, even Socrates.
So because it's inevitable, it doesn't make any difference in the long run, whether it happens sooner or later.
Lough Neagh, in Northern Ireland, is home to a nation of mayflies - one day in May, they all come out of the lake together: tiny, silent, gossamer creatures - so delicate, so beautiful. So many that walking through them is like walking through a cloud.
But the next day, they are all gone; all dead, except for their invisible children hiding in their eggs back in the lough, waiting to come out themselves as new adults another May day in another 12 months' time.
It used to amaze me that Nature could be so wasteful; to put so much energy into making those beautiful gossamer mayflies, only to throw them away after just one day.
But actually, in Nature, nothing goes to waste, not even nuclear bombs, because everything is eventually recycled somewhere, somehow, sometime.
That's what eventually happens to everyone; to me, and to you, and to the next generation of mayflies.
It doesn't hurt any more when you're dead.
And each day you're not dead, is one more day extra.