The Big Sleep

When you die, your whole universe dies with you

British-American writer Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) is among my favourite authors. If you don’t know him, then think of Humphrey Bogart in Howard Hawks’ 1946 film noir adaptation of Chandler’s novel ‘The Big Sleep.’

Chandler was known for his turn of phrase and hard-boiled dialogue and, in my estimation at least, he ranks with Shakespeare for innovation in a particular genre. What ‘The Big Sleep’ refers to, of course, is death.

That pretty much sums up the topic of this essay.

Now, you can dedicate a lifetime to searching out YouTube videos about folks who claim to have returned from the dead but, fact is, nobody ever has. And you can read every scientific journal that theorizes how, statistically speaking, given the vastness of space and billions of planets resembling our own, there is every chance that life exists elsewhere in the universe. Life can even be generated, or at least simulated, in a petri dish. Remember Mary Shelley’s Doctor Frankenstein with his assembly of purloined body parts with the brain of a criminal? He harnessed the power of lightning then applied the electrodes to his motley creation and… Voila!

As easy as it is to create life, it’s even easier to destroy it. I recently read about Sana’a Mehaidli, the world’s first female suicide bomber who sacrificed herself for the liberation of south Lebanon during the Israeli occupation of the mid-1980s. What these misdirected individuals all have in common, besides a misplaced zeal to right political wrongs that will only repeat themselves until the end of time, is that…

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