This Is How My Life Would Flash in Front of My Eyes if I Died Right Now

A joke-reply to a friend's tweet about the "ultimate gulp of water" made me think about the famous near-death-experience of "life flashing in front of your eyes" and how would it look like for me.

Oct 09, 2024

The other day, a friend on X asked people to share their best gulping experience (of any kind of liquid). He gave his own in the first comment—a strange, poorly-installed tap in his schoolyard and how he gulped from it after a football game on a hot day.

This immediately made me think of that day in late August on the GR20 trail in Corsica, which would ultimately become one of my strongest memories.

It happened 8 years ago, right before I turned 40. I was looking for a hiking challenge and decided to undertake what’s known as “Europe’s hardest trail.” That epic failure is a story in itself, and I’ll likely write about it here in the near future.

To understand the moment I’m about to describe, all you need to know is that I was heavily overcharged with unnecessary gear and out of shape. It was a very hot day—I think it was August 23, 2016. I was carrying 27 kg (60 lbs) of gear, wearing heavy shoes, and hiking a section of the trail marked in my guide as “devoid of any drinkable water.” I still had about two hours before reaching camp. It was around 3:30 pm, with no shade in sight, only dark, hot granite rocks and boulders all around me. Other hikers were hundreds of meters ahead.

As I trudged along, I heard a faint trickle of water.

At first, I thought I was hallucinating. The effort was so intense that I genuinely thought I was losing it—having some sort of auditory mirage. But then, to my amazement, I saw a tiny pond formed by slabs of broken granite. It was overflowing with fresh water. Above it, a small, brand-new black plastic pipe jutted from a crack in a massive granite boulder, splashing water in big, cheerful gulps into the pond.

In one swift motion, I released my hip buckle, let the massive hiking bag fall from my shoulders, dropped to my knees like a sinner, and gulped right from the tiny black pipe, loudly and shamelessly. It was ice-cold, delicious mineral water. The park authorities must have just installed this "source captée," as they’re marked on IGN’s topographic maps. It was so new it hadn’t even been mentioned in the updates posted at the refuges along the GR20.

I wasn’t completely out of water at that point—I probably had another liter or so. But I’d been rationing myself all day. This was a punctuation mark in my ongoing suffering, and really, since the beginning of the trek. The contrast between the ice-cold water and the scorching hot day was so stark that it’s carved into my memory as one of the best moments of my life. It’s a perfect example of relative luxury, a concept I find fascinating.

As I tried to fit this whole story into 280 characters for a tweet, I had a funny thought about the infamous near-death experience often referred to as the “life review” or “life flashing before your eyes.” I thought, “Hmm, this moment will definitely make the cut,” and then asked myself three questions:

Is this “life flashing before you die” really a thing (i.e is it scientifically proven?)
If it does happen, how long does it last, and how many memories fit in?
What other memories would likely make it to this “flash”?

I couldn’t find hard scientific proof of the “life review” phenomenon, though there are plenty of near-death testimonies describing such experiences. The earliest account comes from a British naval officer who nearly drowned around 1790. These experiences often seem "panoramic" and meaningful, providing insights about one’s life. The format appears similar in many accounts. I even found a (somewhat skeptical) mention of this mental short film in Sherwin B. Nuland’s book How We Die, which I devoured as a soldier back in 1997.

There is, however, a very interesting scientific research of a single case in which an 87 year old man died of heart failure while he was undergoing an EEG scan of his brain. This revealed that 30 seconds before, and 30 seconds after his heart stopped beating, his brain was apparently “playing memories”. Scientifically, this translates into a thing called “gamma oscillations” (as well as many other Greek alphabet oscillations). In layman’s terms, these are the things that happen in our brain when we remember something or we dream.

While a single case, however extraordinary, isn’t conclusive proof, it’s good enough for me. Based on this case, we might assume the entire “flash” lasts about a minute, highlighting key memories. I want to believe each memory plays for 2-3 seconds, allowing for around 20-30 memories to appear as I leave this world. It’s comforting to think that you might exit life while watching a panoramic short film summing it all up.

So, I’ve decided to list below the memories I believe will make it to "the big premiere." I hope to turn each one of these into a post in the future.

So, here goes:

That moment when I was 3 and I cleared all of my mum’s pots and pans out of the low kitchen corner-cupboard with that strange opening mechanism and how I hid inside.
Me, 4 years old, being told by my dad as he picked me up from the kindergarten to “wait here” and how he was gone for what seemed like forever but then came back with lots of groceries and the coolest toy car I had ever seen (that I still have)
Going with my dad to Haifa, being all excited and not knowing why. Seeing him buy a huge bouquet of flowers, entering a hospital and seeing my mum looking very unusual and weird and then being introduced to my baby sister.
That time when I was nearly 6 and I was sent off on my own to France on an Air France plane and the plane didn’t land where it was supposed to land.
First day of school and I have learned to read my first sentence. I was elated like never before and I ran back home to show my dad the Hebrew word for “dad” and he was not very impressed.
Going out for a very silent walk with my dad in the wadi right outside our town, him plucking some wild weed, putting it in his mouth and giving me one to gently chew on as the sun was setting.
Going out of my home in a scorching hot day in 1986. No other kids around, I see a brand new Subaru car parked with a number plate ending in “86”. I am telling myself to remember this glorious day for the rest of my life “you’re a child and you’re having fun”.
14th of July 1989. I’m in Ardèche in southern France. We’ve been driving to a little village called “Laboule” perched up in the mountains. I am uploaded to a horse drawn carriage with many other pre-teens. We’re all dressed in revolutionary clothing to celebrate the “Bi-centenaire” (200 years) of the French revolution. I barely speak any French. There are two gorgeous 19 year old French girls that I “survey”. They have beautifully tanned thighs and they have no bras on.
Later that same summer, at the Moriah Hotel in Jerusalem, I meet an American teen - 2 years older than me. We hang around and she makes me touch her breasts then she “teaches me how to kiss” in the stinky underground parking. My heart is pounding as I sneak back to bed in my hotel room.
The first time I slept outside in nature. It was a 4 day hike through Mount Meron. We were teens of various ages led by an adult guide. We had to cook for ourselves and as we sat around the fire he told us stories. We slept right on the ground, in sleeping bags with no mattresses. For some obscure and unnecessary reason, we had to take turns for a night watch. On my watch, jackals started howling and I saw their eyes flashing in the faint light in the darkness of the bushes. I was afraid and not afraid at the same time. I just added some dry branches to the fire and looked at the stars. For the first time in my life I understood that this world was bigger than the sum of my problems. It was the first time my mind expanded and my perspective broadened.
The first time I touch a vagina and realised that contrarily to what I had imagined after looking at schemes and drawings in books - it’s not stiff but rather soft and moist. This happens at a friend’s friends house at the Jewish quarter in the old city of Jerusalem.
My first time having sex. I was 14.5 and she was about a year older. We had been fooling around for months when she invited me to stay for the weekend while her parents were away. It was winter and I remember going up so many stairs on the way and skipping puddles. The room was dark. The only light came from the orange glow of that standard heater everyone used in Israel. She was lying naked on the carpet covered by a blanket. It was strange. She was pretending to be sick but she wasn’t. It was her first time as well and it was as if we were floating in outer space. As if the universe was empty but for the two of us and the orange-glowing-spiral-sun.
The kind of heating everyone was using in Israel back in the early 90’s
Taking the bus back to our town from the beach at the sea of Galilee. A bunch of 18 year olds returning from our end-of-high-school impromptu party. My friend Assaf Avni played the guitar all that night and we were beat. We got off the bus at the same stop, he was holding his guitar and we chatted for a bit. He said he was to be drafted in a few days. The sun started to blaze its rays on us. We hugged. I told him to take care and we swore to do all we could to meet again and play and sing. He took off rapidly. I had a horrid feeling I would never see him again and I turned to see him disappear in an alley. I got the shivers. I never saw him again. He died in Lebanon less than two years later. I saw his kind face on the front page of a newspaper on a stand at Savidor train station. It shattered me more than I thought it would. More than I could admit.
Being sent during my military medic school training for a week of boring guard duty at logistics base near Kyriat Malachy. The days are extremely hot. I’m getting off duty in the small stuffy guards room on Friday evening as the sun is setting. As soon as I lay my weary and sweaty body on the bed, the (then new) song “Hell Is Round The Corner” kicks in and it perfectly befits the light and mood.
Another seemingly boring military duty a year later, near my permanent engineering-corps base at the Golan Heights. I’m sent as an on-duty medic to secure the renovation of a new Bailey bridge over the Jordan river. Bored to death, another soldier and I venture down to the bank of the river at nightfall to fetch the pack of beers we hid in the water to cool off. We have one each, the full moon and the sound of water lulls us into a meditative state that seem to last for the better part of an hour. We don’t utter a word. As if enchanted.
Seeing the Easternmost façade of the Louvre as if for the first time on my third day at Architecture School after one of the professors showed me how to draw it properly. The epiphany and the sense of true wonder that gushes in me as all of a sudden I become truly aware for the first time of all the little details and features that compose a building.
Seeing the sun rise on my 34th birthday as I am summiting the Fuji San after spending nearly all night climbing through the Aokigahara Forest of suicide without even being aware of what I’m doing.
Aokigahara Forest - Photo by Artem Shuba
As I am sitting at a table at the “Hotel du Nord” Restaurant in Paris, I see the silhouette of my blind-date climbing up the wide stairs towards me. The last rays of the summer sun shine through her hair and she looks like a gleaming goddess rising elegantly from the land of the dead. She smiles at me and I just know that this is it. She is the one for me.
The day of our wedding, when the final party was over and my wife and I went to our nuptial suit at the Chateau de Balazuc. We were sitting at the edge of our bed, both exhausted, she took off her high heels, we looked at each other and just laughed and laughed.
Chateau de Balazuc
On our honeymoon in Japan we have attempted to do the Yakushima Traverse hike and so many things went wrong. We eventually took a wrong path on the third day and walked for miles on narrow tracks through lush moss-covered forest until we managed to get to a road and hitch a taxi to a posh seaside hotel where, exhausted, we just sat and watched a soft sun setting onto the sea and we fell asleep with it. They were, by far, the best moments of the best day.
Getting lost in Yakushima
At the birth of my daughter, I am advised by one of the nurses to do a “skin to skin” contact and hold her still gunk-covered body under the pink scrub I was given. I hold her, perplexed as the strangest of all realisations come to my mind out of nowhere; this tiny frail creature will one day be a grown woman who will stand and watch as they lower my dead body into an open grave. I am the ending and she is the beginning of everything. I suddenly get a small glimpse of what this life is all about. As If I have moved to a different square on the chess board.
My daughter, few moments after her birth under my pink scrub
The birth of my son. I try to do the skin to skin thing with him as well but he just wiggles. I wonder about the mechanism that is supposed to make me love him as much as I love my daughter and I wonder if that is even possible. Then he opens his eyes for the first time, and I know it’s stupid and that he can’t even see my face properly, but it feels like he has an ancient soul and that soul is peering at me through his little blue eyes. I am flooded and I am instantly in love. So much so that it stuns me. I find it hard to speak or express myself for days later.
Finding that hidden unexpected spring on the GR20 Hike in Corsica and gulping its water in loud lusty gulps.
The sound of the light rain dropping on my tent - mixing with the sounds of the lake’s water lapping at Glas-Alt-Shiel, Scotland as I slowly drift into the sweetest of sleeps I ever had after a long session of tree-bathing.
The first time I ever took MDMA on Israel’s saddest Independence day.

important postscript

Weirdly, this has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever written. It’s a very strange exercise. I thought it would be easy, but it took me a ridiculously long time to write this. I kept procrastinating and finding petty excuses for why I shouldn’t finish this post.

The truth is—I now know—that I’m afraid of dying. I’m terrified of it.

I know every single one of these entries will eventually turn into a post because they’ve all been such defining moments in my life, even if some seem meaningless. I’m also pretty sure the list will change as I accumulate new, unforgettable memories. I say “unforgettable” as a placeholder because, as you may have noticed, right now all of these memories are on the positive side. No traumas or bad moments “made the cut,” which feels a bit artificial. Who am I trying to fool? Who said that “life flashing before your eyes” is all beautiful sepia-toned postcards? There are no guarantees.

Oh god, what have I done to myself? This post will obviously change a lot in the future. Things will be deleted, and others will be added. I won’t go beyond the reasonable number of 30 memories—that’s the one rule I’ve set for myself. I’ll have to come back to it every few weeks, I guess.

That thought both frightens and delights me.