h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi everybody,

13 years ago I was standing on a platform (10m) and didn't know that only 2 seconds later all my life would change.

I was standing there, concentrated. A quick glance towards the water underneath. Many reflections of the bulbs on the surface. Closed my eyes again and waited for my body to say 'Yes, now'.

It didn't come. But I jumped. Two simple figures and when I came out of the second figure (sorry, I don't know if this is the right word for acrobatic figuras) I saw a shade in the water. Desesperately I tried to change the trayectory, opening hands and moving my arms.

My forehead received the whole amount of kinetic energy and was flipped backwards, crunching completely the first seven cervicals of my spine. I didn't loose conscious, but I was just like a little cell in a huge ocean. By observing the air, I could find out that I was sinking slowly towards the ground of the basin. A wonderful feeling of peace came into my perception, a total unity with everything inside and outside the olympic pool. Then darkness or something like darkness.

I woke up three days later in a hospital and tetraplexic. I could move my mouth a littlebit and my eyes. The rest was gone.

Friends told me that there had been a kid diving in the basin (so the shadow was real) and that two swimmers had taken me out from the ground.

For nearly one year I fought, knowing that I would come back to be able to walk again, to move again. 'One in 3 million', I was told.

I am this One. 13 years have passed, and my life is a strange life. Not only because I have regained a certain strength and movements, but because of those moments after the impact, these seconds in the water. Moments full of perception, full of peace.

If 'One' is my first name, 'Pain' is my second. There is always pain now, a consecuence from the accident. I've learned to live with it, but I've not been able to forget how is life without pain.

I longer for a moment of peace, a moment not to feel pain. Obviously the first reaction would be: 'hey, you've got a second chance... be happy or make the best out of it' and that's what I'm telling me every 15 or 30 minutes. But the last 4000 days or so have worn it out and it's just a mechanical way to repeat.

It may sound difficult to understand, but we all live in pain. Normally pain is so 'loud', that our brain is unable to catch a glimpse of other energies, to sort them out within this caos of messages from our nerves.

That's what I found out. Before I jumped from the platform, I thought that I didn't feel pain, but in reality our brain receives thousands of messages full of it. In my eyes, it seems that we have developed the ability to block or absorbe these messages, but in change we've paid a huge price. The cost of being unable or unaware to our real connection to life, to this world and every tiny thing in it.

When the impact cutted like a knife the messages from the nerves-centers (synapis you say in English?) I could connect for some seconds to all. My brain was able to 'listen', to 'see' and to connect to what normally isn't reachable. Loosing connection to the sinapsis made the wonder.

Now I'm like a wanderer between different worlds. On one hand I've regained the connection to my body and that makes me a human being like all of us, and on the other hand there is a very tiny, nearly undetectable connection that tells me about what life can or could be.

People talk a lot about problems of humanity, and I can understand them. We are shown every day causes and reactions, on an intent to understand why our societies have so many problems or disorders.

To me, all this talking and analyzing is working on the top of an iceberg. A gigantic iceberg of pain, that is the real enemy in life.

Sometimes I think I've come to the edge and just would like to stop it all. Doctors say that I'm walking and moving, because I was able to 'rebuild' part of my neck. I know, that this is partly true, but inside I sense that the need of fulfilling something I even don't know is the real cause.

That's why I'm still withstanding physical pain and converting psychical pain into constructive messages or projects. There is something we all can fulfill in our lives, but don't ask me what it is, as I'm still going on just to find out.

Maybe I've fulfilled yet what should have been done. Maybe not.

But if I would be God, the first thing I would convert is pain, as it es the fierest enemy to life - even if our evolution is based on it.

I longer for rest. I'm tired of the continous effort. For me, walking around the corner is a project of considerable dimensions. If you would see me, you wouldn't notice.

¿Why do we always try to hide the pain we feel?

Maybe because we do not want to be different or minus. Maybe because we have constructed a society that only looks for the best, the strong and the sane.

Maybe because the pain we feel is so big, that we would collapse if we would see how far it moves our lifes into caos.

I don't know if this message is on the right place.

May peace turn out to be our first name


Yours sincerely


Miguel Furlock