The first cut is the deepest… an obsession

Mind Hacks: The hardest cut: Penfield and the fight for his sister

In 1935, world renowned neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield published three remarkable case studies describing the psychological effects of frontal lobe surgery.

They remain a fascinating insight into the link between brain and behaviour, but one case was unlike anything Penfield had tackled before.

It described the fight to save the life of his only sister.

This struck me, because i know I could do something that drastic to help someone I cared about with out batting an eye. And it got me thinking about being told recently that I’m obsessed with death. It was laughably dismissed at the time, but it hurt. Mostly because it showed that this person who I thought knew me and cared about me, either didn’t know me at all, didn’t care, or just didn’t pay attention. Obsessive? Yes! With death? Duh. I’m obsessed with life. Completely. It’s coming and going. It’s joys and sorrows. Its beginnings and endings. Death is the ending of life. And it is the part of life that we have trouble most with these days. We were much better with it in the past, but we’ve lost touch with it. And I’m convinced that it is this losing touch with death, loosing touch as we strive for only the ‘good’ that we destroy any chance of being a complete person, or a stable society.

So. Death. Bring it on. I’ll embrace it with open arms. But not as an escape from life, only to make sure I don’t miss a single moment of being alive.