#39 - Death Taught Me I Wanted to Live

Death wasn’t an idea for her growing up—it was something that walked beside her. In this call, we trace a life shaped by early violence in South Africa, a strict Catholic upbringing that equated identity with sin, and a long stretch of years where death felt more like an exit than a fear. She talks about grooming, a marriage built on uneven power, the mental health system that kept missing the mark, and the small, steady voices that helped her stay alive long enough to want to keep living.

From there, the conversation opens into what comes after leaving religion—not certainty, but curiosity. She describes finding a home in the space between belief and unbelief: agnostic, imaginative, drawn to science, and deeply connected to dreams. We talk about grief as something that keeps reshaping itself, why kindness has boundaries, and how repeated loss can change the way you weigh a single day. Discworld’s Death even makes an appearance, offering humor as the unlikely thread that carried her through some of the darkest places.

One moment shifts the whole call: during a recent surgery, she stopped breathing under anesthesia and slipped into a dark, suspended stillness she’d met before in dreams. It didn’t give her answers, but it clarified what matters—write the will, tell people you love them, protect your empathy, and treat life like something you’re choosing, not something you’re surviving. Her belief now is simple and expansive: when we die, we return to a larger field of consciousness, and while we’re here, the only work that matters is how we show up for each other.

Book Recommendation: Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett

If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube.

Chapters

• 0:00 Tech Hiccup And Why Talk Death
• 5:15 South Africa, Violence, And Early Loss
• 10:40 Moving To New Zealand And Finding Safety
• 14:20 Books, Discworld, And Dark Humor
• 18:45 Catholic Upbringing And Punitive Doctrine
• 25:10 Identity, Queerness, And Religious Shame
• 31:00 Grooming, Marriage, And Collapse
• 38:45 Suicidality, Broken Systems, And Survival

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 4:48

This call is being routed by Google.

SPEAKER_00: 4:50

The cost of this call is three cents per minute.

SPEAKER_01: 5:04

Hey, how's it going?

SPEAKER_00: 5:06

It is going good, thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 5:08

Awesome. Thank you for bearing with me on that. I I don't know, every now and then I have a this little glitch where it doesn't connect. So thanks for bearing with me through the technical difficulties. I'm excited to chat with you.

SPEAKER_00: 5:19

Yeah, yeah, that feels good.

SPEAKER_01: 5:20

Yeah. It happens from time to time. So thanks for understanding. Maybe just right off the top, this obviously could be a much bigger question. So maybe just briefly you could give me a little bit of an idea of why you even wanted to do a a call about death.

SPEAKER_00: 5:34

Well, I think the main thing is because most of my life, especially my childhood, I was just surrounded by death.

SPEAKER_03: 5:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 5:43

I came from South Africa, and you may know that to be one of the in at least the top ten categories of dangerous countries. And so when I was younger, that was just how it was. The people would just up and disappear, relatives would just get shot. Wow. And then you just don't see them anymore. Like yeah, that was just how it was. And I thought when I saw your podcast, I thought maybe it'd be interesting what it would be like to share my experience of this as something that's just always there, even though I'm in New Zealand now. My parents are very thankful to them to bring us to what is a rif significantly safer country. But even then something very different occurred from childhood to adolescence to adulthood in New Zealand. So I just thought of it as an opportunity to talk about it.

SPEAKER_01: 6:33

That's awesome. I'm I'm super excited to chat with you. And it's just very interesting for me to be reaching out internationally and to be talking to people who have had different experiences because I didn't grow up in South Africa. I didn't have a lot of death around me. And so I'm very curious to hear more about that and hear your story. But before we kind of get into the bulk of the conversation, maybe we can get to know you just a little bit, you know, obviously keeping the anonymity and everything. Uh so maybe you can give me an idea. I you already mentioned New Zealand. So maybe what part of New Zealand maybe, and then your favorite book and why.

SPEAKER_00: 7:10

Oh, okay. So I live just a little ways out from Wellington, which is the capital of New Zealand.

SPEAKER_01: 7:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 7:18

And so it's about, yeah, half an hour out from the capital. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:23

I'm sure it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00: 7:25

Let's see, my oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 7:28

Um I feel like that's my perception of New Zealand, is it just gorgeous?

SPEAKER_00: 7:33

Oh, absolutely. We're just at the bottom of rural areas, so there's a lot of green bush still around, and just around the corner you could actually go up into the hills with a protected bushes, and it's gorgeous over there.

SPEAKER_01: 7:45

Oh, I'm jealous.

SPEAKER_00: 7:47

And let's see my favorite book. Like, I'm quite a graphic novel reader, a lot of the the things of it, but I also read like book books. There's one that I keep referring to is I don't even know if I can call it a f a favorite, but if it's one that I've read and then will never pick up again in my life. It's a model that's called What on the Tracks. And it just opened up for me what's the possibility of seeing the world from the perspective of a mother who doesn't know what she wants for her children, and through that just makes decisions out of the womb that's like the it's from the point of view of the child of living with that kind of mother, and it just shifted so much about like answering a lot of questions I had with my own mother, answering a lot of questions, what I had with experiences of my mother-in-law, and it just every time it just keeps surfacing back to the mind of remember that story, don't forget that story, because now you have you know, like you don't want to relive that trauma all over again. Yeah, and then I'm just like, okay, I'm just gonna distance myself, yeah, and I'm just gonna enjoy this quirky, quirky little, wonderfully humarious world, which theory practice disc world. And my favorite adventures is the death adventures, just such a well-written character. And actually, my favorite thing is quite a jovial character, even though the subject metal around it was so bleak and that connected with me instantly.

SPEAKER_01: 9:17

I love that. Um I love that we can still have fun and talk about heavy things, which I think that's what I've experienced doing these calls. And I guess now we can get into the really hard question of what do you think happens when we die?

SPEAKER_00: 9:31

Well, I'm in many different minds around it because I grew up Catholic. I am no longer Catholic, and because of that, I lived a very, very distorted concept of when we die, you either go to heaven or you go to hell. But the determining factors kept changing as I grew up. Being a young girl, I'll never ever forget this from a priest. I was around six years old, coming up to seven, and I was informed that if you explore your body in any way, that is the same as committing a murder and you will go to hell for it.

SPEAKER_01: 10:11

Wow, that is that is quite the lesson to be told at such an a young age.

SPEAKER_00: 10:17

You know, this is an old-ass man like robed. Of course, informing a literal child who just wanted to go and play on the swings again. It was just so weird because we were all rounded up in Sunday school, and then we had to have that whole talk about the Ten Commandments, and one of them was the one where you can't live with someone else's wife, and how that connects to masturbation equal to that, and then that equals murder, and it was just and that stuck with me.

SPEAKER_03: 10:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 10:45

Um I thought, oh, well, you know, I'm definitely going to hell because I didn't even know I was doing a bad thing.

SPEAKER_03: 10:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 10:54

And that mindset completely just destroyed me from adolescence into young adulthood. And in terms of when we die, I mean, I've lost a lot of people in my life. I'll I'm happy to say I am 33 years old and the amount of people I've lost in my life, I really shouldn't.

SPEAKER_02: 11:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 11:14

And the worst thing was, especially when I was sitting over, I wasn't allowed to talk about it. That was very I still remember my grandmother's funeral and actually seeing my grandmother and just being told that she's just asleep in the arms of the Lord, and I had no idea what this meant. Because I thought she was gonna wake up because you know, yeah, never saw her again. And where we go for me now, I don't quite believe that there is nothing. I'm definitely not a um atheist where when we die, that's it. But there's too many signs in our living space that there is something beyond, but I very, very, very do not believe that it's not the Catholic Christian of we go to heaven when we are good people in life, and if you're bad, you go to hell, because that's dramatically changed the definitions of good and bad over the hundreds of thousands of years we've been alive.

SPEAKER_01: 12:06

Yeah, yeah. When the rules are constantly changing, that that makes it really hard.

SPEAKER_00: 12:11

I mean, just to give an idea, in the matter of society, especially with the way I'm living in New Zealand, I am in the bottom rung of being an immigrant, of being a person of color, of being non-binary and queer. So I fall into all the things that if I was still in the Catholic faith would just immediately put me into hell. I done having done nothing just for merely existing.

SPEAKER_03: 12:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 12:36

Because grow growing up a female, we were informed that as Eve took the bite of the apple, it's all our fault. Every bad thing in the world is because a woman. And so I grew up thinking, well, I was obviously born in the wrong body because why do I have to suffer when all the guys around me don't have to?

SPEAKER_01: 12:55

Yeah, yeah, I'm kind of treated like the enemy right out of the gate, and I didn't do anything. Yeah, that doesn't I can totally understand how that would not feel fair. I mean, it's incredibly unfair. I'm so sorry you had to go through that.

SPEAKER_00: 13:07

Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you. Because all of this builds up to the resonating belief that I have now, because through, of course, coming out from the tolls and just finding my own way and having relentlessly overbearing Christian parents to the point where they were so worried about my soul, and I kid you not, I had an exorcism performed on me. That was a thing that happened in my life. You've been through it.

SPEAKER_01: 13:32

You have been through it. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 13:36

So they genuinely believed that my teenage rebellion, my thoughts about why can't I date anyone, why can't I go see my friends, why can't I, you know, all of that because they wanted to keep me as nice and polite and pure a Christian girl as possible. And I ran away from home. I started exploring, you know, what is beyond the Catholic Christian faith, and of course, that resulted in me being splashed with holy water. Um, and being told that this means that there's a chance for me to not go to hell. I'm just like, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 14:10

Cool, thanks. Noted.

SPEAKER_00: 14:12

And then it was at that point I resigned to myself of you know what, if I'm going to hell anyway, I'm just gonna do what I want.

SPEAKER_01: 14:18

Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna live my life.

SPEAKER_00: 14:20

And unfortunately, and it'll sound horrifyingly damaged, but when I was just exiting high school, so I was still 16, 17, I met a 20-plus-year-old guy who promised that he could take me out of the situation and I get to live the life that I want. So I got engaged when I was 17.

SPEAKER_03: 14:42

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 14:43

And unfortunately, that particular age gap of being 21 and 17, where it's gonna go.

SPEAKER_03: 14:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:50

And the moment I chose 18, left home, lived in the shitty flating situation that I had absolutely no comprehension about, got dragged up and down the country and just trying to follow work, trying to figure out, okay, we've been engaged, we're gonna be getting married, and having that being put off and put off.

SPEAKER_03: 15:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:09

And then finding myself in a circle of older men and being like, okay, what's going on here? And having them all say that they love me and they care about me, and of course, you know, yeah. The rough childhood I had, that was exactly what I wanted.

SPEAKER_03: 15:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:24

I will not go into too much detail from there because out from that, talking to a therapist informed me that that was groomed and used by these men, basically. And that absolutely sucked.

SPEAKER_03: 15:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:37

Because from there, I struggled with my mental health, and my thoughts on death was very romanticized. I hurt myself a lot. I was hospitalized a few times. Luckily, not out of injury, but out of just I've got a plan, I'm I'm gonna be doing it. I need to go and get some help, sort of thing.

SPEAKER_03: 15:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 16:00

Because I believe that death, even if there was nothing, even if it all just ended, at least it ended. There was no more pain, no more anything.

SPEAKER_01: 16:09

It's better than what you had had, which again, I'm so sorry that you have been through so much.

SPEAKER_00: 16:14

And it's all just to accommodate of like my belief in it, because yeah, I I felt death was the only escape, whether whether that means I went to hell, whether there was nothing, I just didn't care.

SPEAKER_03: 16:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 16:26

And the only reason I just kept holding on is because I called lifelines, I called helplines, and I had somebody go, Hey, stick around just a little bit longer. Trust me on that, it's gonna get better. Even though it took my then husband, because we eventually got married and I was treated like a doll by my mom or the whole thing. I don't remember the wedding very well. That all just sort of happened, and then four years later, I decided that I wasn't good enough anymore, and she told me with one of my friends. And the main I said, I'll never forget the main reason he said it's because I was too much. I was too messed up, he couldn't take the way that I would talk, and you know what? These would all be valid if it didn't result in him deciding, well, I'm just gonna go off and be with somebody else in an intimate level as a girlfriend. You know, because of course I sought help. I can tell you now, the mental health system back in the 2000s sucked. It just absolutely just sucked. They gave me medication they really shouldn't have put me on that made me so much worse. And then they retrialed me again, and then I ended up at the hospital again, and then I was was just informed that I have a pretty good life, I should just be okay.

SPEAKER_01: 17:42

Great.

SPEAKER_00: 17:43

They informed at me, and I'm like, oh yes, that's just a good idea. Of course, thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 17:48

I was just so confused. Thank you for telling me that's in a light and uh yes, I will. Thank you. Thank you for making me aware. I mean the one thing that I'll say here that's interesting is I think we have I don't want to necessarily say everybody, but I kind of have to really fucked up here, like the medical system and the mental health system. And so I kind of imagine that everywhere is better, and so it's it's trying to figure that out it wasn't better there either.

SPEAKER_00: 18:20

So the main difference uh I think between the US and New Zealand is I didn't have to have to spend money on that.

SPEAKER_01: 18:32

Okay. So marginally better, but yeah, it's still uh still not really solving the problems, or actually not even not even attempting to solve the problems. It's it's like you got your arm cut off and it's like, yep, here's a band-aid. That should that should fix it. Yeah, that's wild.

SPEAKER_00: 18:50

The worst of the end of that was everyone in that friend circle, but the older guys and their partners and whatever, they all turned on me and said, It is my fault I got cheated on. The fact that I was just such a wet blanket, depressed so-and-so who just couldn't deal with life. And so they all sided with him, saying that they're glad that he has someone who makes him happy. And I did not realize at the time just how fucking toxic that was.

SPEAKER_01: 19:19

Yeah, I'm glad that you got out.

SPEAKER_00: 19:21

And so then, oh, I'm glad because eventually I did make a decision on my own, which is right, I'm just gonna be alone. Yeah, I made sure because he wanted to divorce me. That was I don't know, I think that's really funny. The whole divorce decision was actually on him because he wanted to marry this new girlfriend, and I was like, you know what, girlfriend, I'm not paying for the divorce. You can pay full money for that.

SPEAKER_03: 19:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 19:42

And then I spent a lot of time, I spent an entire year just on my own, and it's during the time I realized just how familiar with being okay to die I was because during that time, even with all that other turmoil going on, I lost a friend to. suicide. I will never forget what in my mind's eye, what it looked like going in with a my friend's partner at the time and seeing him brain dead. Everything was moving, his eyes was flickering and everything, but he was just he was not there. There was no light of life or anything. And then at that moment I remember how holding his hand and said, even now I just want to live and I want to be happy. Because I remember he was one of the most joyful, one of the most sharing, loving people I knew in an entire friend circle. And for me it was seeing someone in that state that made me realize, wow, that could have actually just been me. And everyone who did know me, whether they liked me or loved me or just tangentially knew me, they would have to deal with that.

SPEAKER_03: 20:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 20:48

So all I would be doing to say in the atheist sort of way, me going into the void, into the nothingness, but leaving all of the rest of me behind for everyone to pick up.

SPEAKER_01: 20:58

Yeah, like the wake of it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 21:00

And when the person is suicidal alive, you don't tell them that. Because I had that talk. I had people say, hey if you die you're actually just hurting everyone else.

SPEAKER_02: 21:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 21:10

And my response to that was why are they still all hurting me while I'm alive then? But it's just that realization of people having to cope with their grief. And I did not know then that I was not gonna be the first and last time, unfortunately. Because I had a distant friend who over those years just every time I would visit my parents always made to visit her because lived in two different cities. And I loved spending time with her because she was someone who didn't care what other people's opinion was. She would just tell her mind. She loved books and I loved talking about books with her and I loved talking about politics and everything. And she was actually a childhood friend of my now ex-husband.

SPEAKER_03: 21:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 21:58

And that friendship persisted because of just how disjointed she was to all of that. He actually completely blocked her out of his life. It was only late I realized 'cause she confessed to me that she felt it was her fault that I experienced the pain that I did and I, you know, tried to reason with well what why? There's no reason for you to feel that.

SPEAKER_02: 22:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:23

And she said because she saw the signs of her friends making a big mistake and she tried to talk him out of forming this relationship with an underage girl. But she felt guilty that she couldn't get him out from doing that. And I'm just like, you know, this has been over eight years. You've been holding on to that for that long and she said yes and I was like well please don't because I was definitely not your fault. But I remember how she cried and said that she should have done something. And I just said you're not responsible for his actions.

SPEAKER_03: 22:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:58

But I didn't know that day that was gonna be the last time I was gonna see her.

SPEAKER_03: 23:01

Gosh you have man.

SPEAKER_00: 23:04

Yeah. And it turned out that she was actually really really sick. She was suffering from early onset dementia. Oh wow and I had no idea. She was uh she was in her late forties but it was something that she described to me her mother had where it happened rapidly quite early in life but she did not share with me any of what she was going through until it was too late. It was revealed that I was actually the last person to see her alive. Oh wow and I think she organized the coffee day she then confessed to me all these feelings and even then I didn't know about any of their finality.

SPEAKER_01: 23:43

Yeah. Because it's impossible then to write the whole thing Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:47

And we left on such a good note and I've made that a thing with myself ever since with the first time I lost a friend which is no matter how angry upset with anyone I am I always tell them I love you I care about you goodbye as I leave because you just you never know. You never know that'll be the last time. Yeah for a million reasons right you never know and so from there my relationship with the concept of death just changed. Suddenly I started feeling that I don't want to die and it was weird because I there is a very strange horrible comfort in knowing that all this is temporary. You know like the debts you have to go through the financial crisis the job that you hate working at you know and at the end you're just gonna off yourself so what's the point? Then feeling actually no I don't want to die and really fully feeling that suddenly you're afraid. You need to take care of yourself. You realize you need to not work yourself to death that you actually have to you have responsibilities and you've got to do that. You've got to live. Yeah the reason I even got to experience that is because one year later of everything I tried dating it didn't really work out and you know and I just basically just swore off relationships or anything. And then of course I fall in love with the author of a book that was written in New Zealand and then it turned into a tragic love story and now I'm still married to him.

SPEAKER_01: 25:19

Oh nice congrats thank you um that's how it always happens too right is right when you swear it off and then it all comes together.

SPEAKER_00: 25:28

Exactly right when you swear it off you say I don't want to be in love anymore I'm never gonna get married again and and then suddenly you just meet like someone who is not perfect who has their own struggles and everything but wants to live through it with you.

SPEAKER_01: 25:44

Yeah yeah after all all that you've told me so far I my heart is so full because it's been so tragic all this loss and just everything has been so it's just hard to hear that someone went through so much. It makes me so happy for you to say that then you found this person that you're with and and you love them so much. Sorry I didn't mean to interject that just makes me happy oh no that's okay.

SPEAKER_00: 26:10

Yeah and I realized sometime later that's when I was younger when I was on the phone with the person the lifeline that's what that person meant. It gets better.

SPEAKER_01: 26:19

Yeah you just have to cling on and you just have to just persevere basically going back into finding my own faith yeah because ex-husband was huge atheist very anti-God wanted me out of the whole God the thought of it being nothing actually that was kind of part of the appeal right at the beginning was this is this is a way out of this thing that is not working for me at all. So yeah I get that it makes sense that it's like there is that pull there it's like sweet this is my way out of this it's just a swing complete 180 into something else that was difficult and challenging and traumatic in other ways.

SPEAKER_00: 27:00

Basically yeah and so what I believe going into my own figuring out my own belief system is religion is just not a thing for me. I do not like the concept of religion it it makes too much sense of things that we can't actually fully comprehend. And it seems very I mean it's just the evidence of it. It seems very geared towards the white patriarchy being on top of everything just going to native lands and taking whatever thing shocking you know and I'm just kind of like you know what no not into that. Yeah until I start exploring spirituality just the idea of just faith yeah in something yeah I can't remember what's the word for it. Is it agnostic?

SPEAKER_01: 27:44

I I would say vague belief that there is something yeah I think agnostic is and maybe I'm wrong too but I feel like agnostic is like not necessarily like there is no God there is no nothing I think it's just kind of like I'm uncertain. I I don't necessarily know but I'm not necessarily like hardcore there's nothing I think that's agnostic. I think that's what I would define myself as maybe I've been defining myself the wrong way which would not be a shocker but that's kind of how I I see it. Yeah. Yeah because I mean here's a very hot take to me atheism is the religion of logic basically yeah it it acts like a religion so yeah it's I would say it has ties to what I would call like the church of science. I think you're I think you're spot on it's very tied to science and kind of facts and figures.

SPEAKER_00: 28:37

What's really interesting is one of my education branches of education was very science linked but the people I looked up to there was a lot of scientists who brought a lot of poetic and romanticizing like space and the oceans and they brought they use such beautiful language that invoked a lot more of like the artistry of science.

SPEAKER_02: 29:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 29:05

They realized that a lot of people who are very much on the atheism thing that they don't have a creative bone in their body in that regard. And it's this understanding that yes science is a belief system yeah that works for us because we can prove whatever thing that we need to do repeatedly over and over again. But that does not mean anything to do with the supernatural or you know many of them may have a scientific explanation yeah but then some of them simply may not because the scientific evaluation has to meet a criteria and repetition can you replicate it in certain conditions.

SPEAKER_01: 29:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 29:45

Because you gotta believe in something yeah totally because right now what I'm seeing and I'm seeing it with my younger sisters part of the Gen Z generation they do not have anything to believe in. Yeah there's there's no hopefulness. All they see is the generations before them having completely failed. Yeah and this is the millennials who you know are trying to we're trying we're trying to make those changes you know like we were the generation about peace on earth we've got to get greener we've got to stop global you know we were that and then for some reason uh you know we got older and then we're like right yeah you know that system that we tried to educate you with ignore all of that go back to being part of the part of the cogs in the machine yeah the machine is very smart it's very it's very good at getting you to be a cog.

SPEAKER_01: 30:34

I guess I may I maybe I shouldn't say it's smart, but it's very good at making people cogs and continuing to be cogs. It's very very dialed at that.

SPEAKER_00: 30:42

Yeah and so from there the belief that I have nurtured for myself actually comes from even though in scientific terms it's been disproven the Carl Jungian beliefs around dreams and id and all of that. Yeah a lot of what I because it's an instinctual feeling of even if it wasn't scientific anymore, they started it all of those psychology people actually going into the psych of what makes human nature and everything, whether the interpretations were correct or not, they clung onto something that now we are only finally starting to really pour ourselves into which is why we have talk of neurodivergence and autism and all that. Like the it it stems from that and one of the very romanticized beliefs I have is the idea of subconscious and the deep consciousness and everything.

SPEAKER_01: 31:40

Love this stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 31:41

And I myself believe that we can get to a near death state when we sleep. There is and it very very recently I've gone under general anesthetic very recently for the first time in my life and all they did was prove how I how I feel in that belief because when we dream the especially the kind of dreams I've had we go into a space where if it's meant to be just nonsense or processing or anything, why is it that there are people who I've never met before who act completely like actual people that may have lived in history? Why is it that the you know and even with the really out there dreams like I don't know suddenly dream you're a slug and you're being eaten by a bird but you're also not the slug at the same time like why do we experience that if it's all just meant to be garbled nonsense why has that captured humanity's imagination for so long?

SPEAKER_03: 32:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 32:44

And so my belief of what happens when we die is we we join the great unconsciousness there is an energy we basically just become energy again. Even in the scientific way of we are literally just electric things going between tissue in the head that has the thought that we find pizza delicious. Pizza is delicious let's be let's be clear that is that is a fact exactly but we are I kinda came across it on on the internet we are meat mix powered by electrical currents that occur in our brain that has us have thought that we are aware of being and so I believe when we die all of that knowledge and everything goes into that great subconsciousness which we can pick up from when we go back to sleep because one of the things I was very curious about is the idea of why do we call it eternal slumber. And this then circles back to what was Schultz when I was a child which is I don't want a grandma's just sleeping in the arms of the Lord. And from that very early link the idea of we need to sleep, we need to rest and when many older people die when they go to sleep they don't wake up.

SPEAKER_03: 34:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 34:04

And I always wondered what happens what is the transition of when we are brain dead when the body is still telling the body to do things but what makes the person who they were not there anymore.

SPEAKER_01: 34:15

Yeah I love the kind of collective unconscious outside of nothingness. It's the one that makes most sense to me that we are all and not just human to human right just humans and plants and and all everything is connected through this kind of consciousness or unconsciousness. I think that is the thing that really at least in this journey so far who knows what else I'll learn. I'm trying to learn as much as I can but it's one that makes sense to me at least resonates with my experiences. But who knows?

SPEAKER_00: 34:47

I we could be totally wrong but I I like the way that it sounds and of course you know then people and it's fascinating to hear people say oh so if we're not bound by heaven and hell should we just do whatever the hell we want and it's like well no you're still alive you're there's still consequences we have made sure as a society that there will still be consequences.

SPEAKER_01: 35:09

Yeah and even outside of society right like if you go do something stupid like hey you could lose an arm that's that's a consequence that's not like society it's like oh yeah I did whatever I wanted and there are things that still hold this together. That is an interesting argument. I love that one.

SPEAKER_00: 35:29

Because my morals for the life that I live it's not based around Catholicism Christianity religion. My morals around the fact that I am alive right now this is all I have every day that I wake up could be my last.

SPEAKER_03: 35:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 35:43

What do I want to do with that time? Yeah and even though for many people they're very and I've come across this especially in the wider scope of social media many people get very scared around the idea of you know oh that's so pessimistic how could you just love your life like each day you you're thinking that you might die or anything and my thought is well because it puts it into perspective.

SPEAKER_02: 36:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 36:06

It just gives a closer to you like do you want people who who may live longer than you remember you as a good person, remember you as a kind person.

SPEAKER_03: 36:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 36:15

Do you want to make those connections with people that I mean if you something were to happen, you'd have people who would miss you.

SPEAKER_01: 36:23

Yeah. But there are so many oh okay I was gonna say I'm so much on the same boat of there's so many people that think what I'm doing with this is oh it's so morbid, it's so depressing. And I found so many byproducts of facing this fear of mine positive byproducts of being less afraid to live my life and take risks. And if it doesn't work out okay well that's okay you know I at least I tried I did it and no harm so found like no big deal. And kind of like you're talking about I've noticed more and more recently is this intense gratitude for things that I probably would just kind of take for granted very small things where when you put into perspective that this is finite, I say this to people all the time and I think it freaks them out. I'm 38. So there's a very good chance that I probably live for a while longer, but there's no guarantees. And so I often am like yep I could get hit by a car on the way home and people freak out by that. But it's true. You don't know or I could get diagnosed with something or there's a million things that could happen. And there's probabilities of the likelihood of those things happening which are are are low, but you don't know. And so by looking at life and and not just having the waking up and saying oh it could be my last you know just kind of having that like we all know we're gonna die. I think everybody knows they're gonna die but I don't think very many people actually take it to heart. And so from you I'm getting you actually wake up and say this could be my last and you appreciate that and you're grateful because you get this death it's not depressing. It's not morbid it's not pessimistic. It's quite honestly the exact opposite of all of those things which is so surprising one thing I know is you've done your scare you've you've gotten your end of enough like let the good times roll like it's time for that. I don't really have any sway over the universe or anything but that's my personal opinion is you've done your time and we don't need any more scares or any more tragedy or trauma. You you deserve a good easy life.

SPEAKER_00: 38:37

Oh I'm very thankful for that I really appreciate that. I wish I could do I wish I could help with it but yeah well one thing I could definitely say is being given this opportunity has definitely helped with that. I'm glad like please understand I am extremely grateful to be able to voice these sorts of things because it's the kind of things that we need to hear. Yeah we are so overexposed to the death of hundreds of thousands of catastrophe that it's become so abstracted to us that we don't know how to deal with it when it hits close to home. Yeah absolutely and being able to understand that you will grieve you will hurt. Yeah it's part of life and it will and with your faith in religion is like you know you can think hopefulness like grandma's in heaven and you think you know the bad people in hell if that helps you process life yeah that's fine. As long as you don't try and basically make everybody else's lives shittier by telling them they're all going to hell. Because I think that's awful. That should not be a thing.

SPEAKER_03: 39:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 39:41

But just being kind and especially in your moments when you feel very emotionally like oh this person's being an asshole to me and everything. Just stepping away from that very visceral emotion and going, hey, maybe they're going through shit.

SPEAKER_01: 39:54

Yeah, you have no idea.

SPEAKER_00: 39:55

Maybe this is not a personal thing.

SPEAKER_01: 39:56

Yeah you have no idea And very likely it's not a personal thing. I think we we tend to think it is, but I think a very large majority of the time it's nothing personal. It's so many other things.

SPEAKER_00: 40:08

And so it's just living, knowing that the impression that you want to leave with people is that you care.

SPEAKER_02: 40:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 40:16

But also not going too far to that extent. Because I I am highly empathetic. I I can overextend, I have been taken advantage of by many people. They see someone who's very kind.

SPEAKER_02: 40:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 40:26

So they just want to keep taking and taking until you know they just want to leech off. I've had so many people through my life to do that. And so it's also about going, hey, I need to protect myself too.

SPEAKER_03: 40:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 40:38

Going back to the belief around living your life as if that's all you're gonna get to experience, because if you die, you either retain your memories or you don't, you just disperse into the energy and come back as something else.

SPEAKER_03: 40:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 40:50

If reincarnation is one of the belief things and everything. But when I was in the operating room and they put me on a general anesthetic, it was the first time I truly felt suspended between life and death. What I didn't know was at some point during the operation I just stopped breathing.

SPEAKER_01: 41:08

Whoa.

SPEAKER_00: 41:08

It turns out I might actually suffer from sleep apnea.

SPEAKER_01: 41:12

Um that's probably a good place to for them to find out that you might have it.

SPEAKER_00: 41:17

Yes. And I still I have a memory of what I was. I was suspended in complete darkness. This place where I could feel my body on the table. I was in my body still. It was all darkness, and I was just in a fixed point in time, and that was it. This was the in-between. And it's a place that in my dreams I've visited many times. I've known it as the in-between. And for many people, usually they're like, oh, it lasts a few seconds and then you're back. It felt like hours. The operation was actually just 15 minutes. I felt like I was in that space for hours.

SPEAKER_01: 41:52

That's why I was.

SPEAKER_00: 41:53

I've never had that experience before. And then as I was waking up, I was I had nurse sit with me reminding me to breathe. Because I just wasn't. And so I was just like, Oh, okay, that's very weird. And from there I realized just like how in those very vulnerable positions that you're put into for operations and things, you're way closer to it than you can imagine.

SPEAKER_03: 42:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 42:17

Yeah, that's very true because before the operation, I finally got around to doing my will. I met up with some friends and had a good time with them because even though 99.99% of it would be successful, there's always that one chance because it's my first time going under general.

SPEAKER_03: 42:32

Yeah, yeah, you do.

SPEAKER_00: 42:33

And I may not wake up. Yes. And and and afterwards they informed me, yeah, I stopped breathing. So, you know, it did something did happen, but they were able to rouse me out of it.

SPEAKER_01: 42:44

Which is good. I'm glad I'm so glad that they were able to.

SPEAKER_00: 42:48

Exactly, because it was nothing went into the red or anything. It was just unexpected for them because there was no record of it.

SPEAKER_01: 42:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 42:55

Of course. And so it's something they delightfully discovered and said, Yeah, you should maybe talk to someone about that.

SPEAKER_01: 43:01

Delightfully discovered, I like that.

SPEAKER_00: 43:03

Exactly. And so just knowing that we as people I believe, I think it was Neil deGrasse Tyson who said that or one of those wonderful scientists, put the idea that we are the universe experiencing itself. We were gifted the consciousness from the macro into the micro, which is us, yeah. To actually experience being alive.

SPEAKER_03: 43:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 43:41

And from that point of view, I've just been like, wow. So we need to make use of what the time that we definitely know that we have.

SPEAKER_03: 43:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 43:50

Which is when we wake up, this is the time, and then when we go back to sleep, we don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 43:55

And I think that's like a a perfect little message to end on, to send out to the to the listeners and everything. I do want to say I love this conversation so much. One of the things that I found really fascinating is pretty much every single person that I've talked to, I think you're, I don't know, somewhere in the high 30s of the people that I've talked to. And everyone answered the question, what do you think happens when we die? pretty quickly out of the gate. And not that's like all these twists and turns, but it's like you kind of held that back for so much of the conversation with all this context. And I just thought it came together so beautifully and like almost in this like very, very cool like movie type reveal, like this big grand reveal at the end of the conversation. And so I thought that was fantastic. And I also just want to say thank you for being vulnerable to a complete stranger and sharing such personal stories. That means the world to me that you trust to have that conversation with me. I'm glad that somehow, someway, that one of the good things that came from social media is that you found this project and that we were able to get on the call across the world. And I just immense gratitude from me to you and so thankful for you.

SPEAKER_00: 45:10

Oh, well, thank you very much. And thank you for hearing me out and listening to my story.

SPEAKER_01: 45:14

I'm so glad that we did this. And yeah, let's definitely stay in touch.

SPEAKER_00: 45:18

Oh, yes, please. I would love that.

SPEAKER_01: 45:20

Yeah. And yeah, I hope you take care.

SPEAKER_00: 45:22

Yes, I hope you take care too.

SPEAKER_01: 45:24

Thank you. I'll talk to you later.

SPEAKER_00: 45:27

Bye bye.

SPEAKER_01: 45:28

Bye.