X-Message-Number: 19015 From: "Steven Lacher" <> Subject: More on "that feeling"..... Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 06:52:14 -0400 First off, I want to say thanks to Rudi, Mike, Robert, and anyone else who expressed their agreement with or appreciation of my post before. It's funny, when I first signed up, I was warned that Cryonet was sometimes rather a contentious place, filled with people who weren't always going to say nice things about Alcor, or each other. (To the credit of the person who told me this, they still recommended I sign up for Cryonet, saying it's one of the best net resources for us cryonicists!) I've actually found that Cryonet is anything but what they described to me. I can't begin to tell you how often I appreciate this list. In any case, now onto the meat of my point. About a month or so after I got my bracelet, I was driving to work and was struck by this overwhelming revelation, almost an epiphany. (I know, another religious term from an atheist!) Here's what the revelation was: So many things crappy little bad things happen to you in the space of a given day - you get stuck in traffic, you stub your toe in the dark looking for your shoes, your boss says something callous to you, etc. etc. etc. And you COULD get annoyed, depressed, troubled by these things. But there's this one fact, this one overwhelming thing, which mitigates just about anything which is negative in your life. The fact is: LIFE is GOOD. Being alive, able to feel sunlight on your face, smell honeysuckle on a warm breeze, hear babies laughing, or birds singing - all these things are beautifully magnificent, beyond measure. The sheer pleasure of being a living thing cancels out any petty greivances which can bog you down. I find this especially true as a cryonicist. I have no faith in anything, but I don't need to seek comfort or explanations for the bad things that happen to me or anyone else in this world. To me, the ability to just BE, and to experience sensation is joyous. Being alive feels good! I don't need any outside agency or entity to affirm that. I'll admit, sometimes it's an idea and an ideal I forget. I let my job concerns or other little life troubles sometimes weigh me down. But then I'll just suddenly remember how great it is just to EXIST, and all those feelings just vanish. Now lots of people have asked me, "What happens when you get revived after your suspension, and..... ... all your friends/family are dead? ... the world's totally different from what you know? .... you have to start over from scratch, financially, in your career, etc.?" My answer to all these things is that it doesn't matter - I'll be ALIVE! Given the choice between alive and not, it's an easy binary. I can make new friends, love new people, and everything else is just marginal. And hey, I'll know all of you folks, right? Thanks for reading, and long life! --Steven Lacher, Alcor member A-1865 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19015