Near Death Experiences

Jonny Gomes has had five near death experiences.

Supposedly.

When he was a freshman in high school a candle tipped over and set the sleeping bag he was sleeping in on fire.

A year later he was involved in a severe car crash that killed one of his best friends and sent Gomes to the hospital for two days.

As a senior in high school he was camping with friends when "an old, crazy moonshiner lit us up with a bunch of rounds out of a shotgun."

On Christmas Eve 2002, Jonny Gomes had a heart attack.

Last but not least he had a "run-in" with a wolf owned by a man who was tending to Gomes grandmother's property.

Jonny Gomes is a wild man. He doesn't have to do anything to prove it to you. Just look into his eyes. He definitely has that "I don't give a shit" light blazing from those orbs.

He and Mike Napoli were twins this year. Except for the eyes. Gomes gave off the vibe. The balls to the wall I am who I am vibe. He had the look. Not the external look. The internal look that spotlights out from the soul.

I'm not sure about the sleeping bag deal or the old, crazy moonshiner deal, or the wolf story. I'll buy the heart attack and the car crash.

Gomes has had at least two legitimate looks at death.

That's enough to steel your nerves to do battle with life.

We all need near death experiences. I don't know why, but we do. We all dribble our lives away whining and wasting time.

People who have stared down cancer or survived horrific accidents or come through heart attacks or learned to survive and flourish with a debilitating disease are the people who have an agreement with life.

You hear it all the time. I treasure every day, I worship my time with my family, sunrises make me cry ecstatically, I dig, I dig, I dig.

Maybe the rest of us need to manufacture near death experiences.

Maybe we need to take the things that bother us, the things that scare us and blow them up in our heads to life threatening proportions.

I am not talking about dramatizing the near fatal threat of a hangnail. I am talking about taking the real things that compromise our lives and examining them under the microscope of life's shortness.

As each medication is prescribed, think about what that necessity means. Take whatever it is in your life that makes you stop short, that makes you think, and weigh that against your mortality.

We are blase about life but we fear death. If we bring death closer to us, maybe it will light the fire.

Maybe it will give us the perspective to cherish every day every minute every breath.

Because that is how life should be lived.