Death is something nobody can explain. When you die nobody really knows what happens next and I think that is the real mystery of life. As well as you can die in an accident or as an old person, and never come back, you can also die or almost die and come back to life. This type of experience can be defined as a near-death experience and can be explained by people who have been in the border of death or people that have died and come back. Such experience may come with the feeling of levitation, total serenity, presence of a light or tunnel, etc. As hard as it is to believe, I have been through one of this in which I did experience some of the characteristics mentioned before.
Near-death experiences are one of the toughest things to overcome in life. Ever since this happened to me, I have been so paranoid and scare because it is increasable to think I was personally in that position. This happened to me one time I drowned, fainted and came back. I was at Culebra on the beach with my little cousin and a wave pushed us very far from the shore. We tried to swim back but the current was too strong, so we started screaming for help. We then realized nobody could see us or hear us and we started to cry. I remember feeling desperate, in no control of myself because we had actually no way out of it. I wanted to save my little cousin and myself and I didn’t know how. I cried and pushed us to try to swim against the current for a long time until I gave up. I was so tired, and I could barely breathe anymore. At this moment, all my panic disappeared, and I just accepted I was going to die peacefully, and I let myself go. I remember I heard my little cousin screaming as I felt the water going up my face through my lips, my nose and when it reached my eyes I fainted. I don’t know if it was a dream but as I fainted, I saw a light and all I wanted to do is go to it because it made me feel peaceful. Next thing I knew, I was in kayak of a person that saw me beneath the water and pulled me and my cousin up.
As I read “The science of Near-Death Experiences” I thought about my experience and I felt I could compare myself to all of them especially to the feeling of Jeff Olsen. He is a man that fell asleep while driving and crashed his car with his whole family in it. He says that lying in the wreckage with his back broken, one arm nearly torn off, and one leg destroyed, he was for a while conscious enough to register that his 7-year-old son was crying but his wife and infant son were silent. He then questioned himself: “What do you say to a man who feels responsible for the death of half his family?”. This is exactly how I felt with my little cousin. I felt responsible and guilty for the danger she was at and so desperate that I could not help her. I just thought about how little she was and how close she was to die.
After we were saved, I sat down and though about my life and all of the things I took for granted. I used to be a very stressful girl who always got worried and though life was over for things that weren’t really important. Ever since that day I realized. I should be thankful I’m alive and I should live with less worries and stress. As some people in the reading say: “If your life has been a struggle, a near-death experience sets you in a different direction: you nearly died, so something has to change… It offers the possibility of an escape from something that holds you back, and a transformation into something better.” I can say this has been one of the toughest journeys of my life and one of the most difficult experiences to overcome. But, thanks to this, I am now a better person who is grateful every day for what she has and most of all for being alive.
Lichfield, Gideon. “The Science of Near-Death Experiences.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 23 Nov. 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-science-of-near-death-experiences/386231/.
Bon voyage 