John Snow Instructs

The Phantom has only had general anesthesia once, an experience millions across this country and around the world have had. Asking those who have had it, the Phantom has been repeatedly astonished how little it has seemed to have affected them. 

Most say, "Oh, I just wanted to be knocked out when they were doing whatever they were doing." For most, there  was the sense of relief at not having felt pain or fear during their surgical procedures. 

For the Phantom it was a profound existential experience. "Existential" is one of those words like "brilliant" or "awesome" which has been used to death, used up into meaninglessness.  The way "existential"  is used currently is to imply "significant" or profound, as in the Republican party is having an existential crisis, or a baseball team's season is starting poorly and they have to make an existential choice about trading for a new pitcher.   But for the Phantom it goes back to Sartre and Camus who were talking about the meaning of life, of being and nothingness.  For the existentialists the only meaning in life comes  from acts we each do to give our lives meaning. There is not meaning bestowed by God or any greater being. We live our lives, take action or fail to and then it's over: Poof. Nothingness.
We do something, make choices without asking what God wants us to do, or what Jesus would do, without reference to any higher power. We are simply in the position of the man who thinks he should dive into the river to save the child not because God is watching but because he must do it if nobody is watching, to live with his own judgement of himself.

When John Snow is brought back from dead by the Red Lady, Melisandre, people want to know what death was like.  Were there the dozen virgins, pearly gates, clouds and idyllic vistas?

No, John tells them. There was nothing. Simply nothing.

And that's exactly what I experienced under anesthesia: A big blank. Nothingness. One moment I have feelings, sensations, memory, fear, then...nothing.

I found that profoundly disturbing. Where had "I" been?  

Only one other time had that ever happened, when I was knocked unconscious in an auto accident, but when I came to, when consciousness returned there was a lot going and I didn't have time to reflect on it. 

After anesthesia I kept wondering and wonder to this day where I was. Which makes you wonder what consciousness is, having experienced the opposite. 

Where was I, for that matter, before I was born?

I did love the scene of John's resurrection:  You see his body there and his faithful dog lying beside him, and you just know the first creature to realize what's going on would be the one creature who never leaves his side: his dog. That seemed right.

And, of course it was a woman, the Red Woman, Melisandre who brings him back.  Last we saw her, she had aged before our eyes from the fetching woman into an old woman, with withered thighs, breasts, skin, hair in one of the most horrifying scenes in cinematic history. It was all the argument one needs to see aging as something pretty bleak and pathological. We can talk about teleomeres on the ends of chromosomes, ribosomes, epigenetics, but it comes down to horror until we understand more.

I'm not sure nothingness is horror, but it sure does impose a certain meaning on life--once you believe there is nothing after this life, you can never live life the same way.