Twirl over breathlessness: to be or not to be

I found Simon at the family table, engaged in a lively conversation with an older man who introduced himself as Luuk and a neurasthenic leptosome of indeterminate age named Michel.

Luuk had a tanned face, an abundant head of hair with silver-gray curls and a matching beard. They immediately continued their conversation, paying no further attention to me, and it was about serious matters; that became very clear to me very quickly.

“You don't come to Pattaya to give your life a new impulse, but to end it under bearable circumstances. Or at least, if you want to put it less bluntly, to take a break, a long break – which may turn out to be final.” Michel looked at us in turn with his piercing pig eyes. “Well well, that is very heavy food on an empty stomach,” I protested.

As an explanation, Simon pushed me an article in the latest issue of the Pattaya Mail with the striking headline: What happens if you die in Thailand? I made another feeble attempt to change the subject by asking if if shouldn't be when, but failed miserably. A quick look at the article taught me that it was not about dying but about being dead: what happens to your remains and your belongings? Yes, logical, I thought, dying in Thailand is exactly the same as dying everywhere else, it doesn't matter where you are anymore.

I concentrated on their conversation and listened to Luuk. “….. the attacks are very short and stormy and it is usually over within an hour: who can be out of breath for a long time? It is actually a prolonged „last breath‟, which is why my doctor speaks of an exercise in dying: one day my breathing really does what she has tried so many times. Now it's over for now, but I'm not like the man who thinks he's won his case the moment it's adjourned."

Michel crowed with pleasure at this striking comparison and stated that we all go for the ax and that this is not bad at all, but very good. He believed that we were in the right place in Thailand because if you had enough time to live you would automatically become a Buddhist: our body gradually detaches itself from all kinds of physical pleasures and the candle gradually goes out.

“After Pattaya there is nothing left: whether you are homosexual, heterosexual or both, Pattaya is the destination of the last chance, after which you have no choice but to renounce desire. I have now understood death; I don't think he will hurt me much. I have known hatred, contempt, decay and various other things, even momentary moments of love. Nothing of me will live on, nor do I deserve it: I have been a mediocre individual in every way.”

We paused for a while to let this self-disclosure sink in, and then Simon resumed the conversation: “But most people are still very afraid of dying, let alone being dead. Are you not bothered by that thought?"

"Well, that doesn't bother me at all." Luke explained. “That is exactly where we so often go wrong: we assume that death follows us, when it has both preceded and will follow. All that was before our time is dead and what does it matter whether you do not begin or cease if the result is the same in both cases: 0 not being.

I ask you: if someone says that a lamp is worse off when it is extinguished than before it was lit, isn't that stupid? We too are kindled and extinguished; in the meantime we experience something, but there is deep peace at both ends.”

Luke, you are absolutely right. My favorite philosopher says somewhere that he cannot understand why people are afraid of death, of non-existence, when the gaping hole of the billions of years before their birth does not seem to frighten them at all. I was very touched by this profound wisdom. And you figured that out all by yourself a long time ago! I think it's beautiful and I want to raise a glass with you."

Simon raised the glass and we sounded solemn, deeply detached and edified by this unfathomably deep insight. I briefly considered trying to answer the question if of When to resuscitate, but I realized in time that this serious conversation had reached its conclusion. We also talked about the fun sides of life in Thailand, but that's a completely different story.

PS Statements by Luuk taken from: Seneca, – Learning to die. Letters to Lucilius; statements by Michel taken from: Michel Houellebecq, – Platform. In the middle of the world.