March 19, 2023
by Michael Knight
Once upon a time I had a death experience.
In popular jargon, it is called a “Near Death Experience,” or an NDE.
I wasn’t “near” death.
I was dead.
But I was not dead for very long.
I was dead just long enough to realize I was still alive, even though I had no body for the duration of that event, which was perhaps no more than 20 minutes or half an hour in real time.
Others who’ve had NDEs have written books about their profound realizations, or meeting with some Great Being and having a love-filled discussion before coming back to serve humanity.
My short sojourn into the blackest blackness imaginable was nothing like that.
The supersonic speed at which I found myself traveling down a spiraling blue tunnel, watching a light in the distance coming toward me and getting bigger by the split second did nothing to tamper my absolute anger.
Why was I angry?
Because for the seventh year in a row I had crashed my enduro bike at high speed, and having never previously made it to the finish line, I had been determined to do it this time.
As the approaching light looked like it was about to swallow me whole, I snarled, “I’m Not F#$@ing Finished!”
That stopped the light in its tracks. It turned itself down until it became just a teeny weeny speck, then disappeared completely, leaving me alone in the blackest blackness imaginable.
I floated there forever, but gradually became aware of a noise in the distance, a bit like a bear growling, or a dead man groaning – and pretty soon I was back in the body; a body with a few cracked vertebrae and arms that would take at least six months to become fully functional again.
And what has that to do with current and future events?
I think the word is “analogy,” an analogy being, according to my Cambridge dictionary, “a comparison between things that have similar features, often used to help explain a principle or idea.”
In this case, the similar features are that America is going through a “Near Death Experience.”
Others have said that civilization itself is heading for an NDE. But I would suggest that having had my own NDE, I can say with confidence, and indeed optimism, that there are good times, much better times, beyond the temporary period of darkness that we are about to go through.
Switching subjects for a second, I’m sure that the pending arrest and indictment of President Trump is going to create great turmoil in America in the immediate future.