What is the closest you have ever come to feeling alive?

[L. Coyote]

O.K., a bit of a pun on another thread right now. I've almost been dead so many times I couldn't honestly answer the other thread. Take nine stab wounds and you've got an answer to both questions. Surprisingly, almost dying makes you feel very alive. At least the first few times ....

What was the closest you've ever come to dying/death....?

[TipTok]

1. Same event as the last thread...

Mine was a 7.62 round that plunked into a berm about a foot from my head.... on a random hill in Logar, Afghanistan.

Spritzed me with the dirt spray and I rolled right the fuck out of there.

One of the defining moments of my life actually. As a military guy, you always wonder how you are going to react and it did my soul a lot of good to know that I didn't freak out.

I actually remember cracking jokes...

Thinking about it earlier today, as I prepare to go again, inspired me for the OP. I chat every day with folks who have killed and been nearly killed a dozen times over.

I was wondering how the other half lives.

Side note... This event was shortly followed by an A-10 BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRtttt and everything went quiet after that. I will love that plane forever.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=7837464

"Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result." - Winston Churchill

[Boomerproud]

2. Closest I came to dying was in 2012 and I had pneumonia and didn't know it.

I just laid in bed for 2 days and drank tea and ate crackers. I'm Type-2 diabetic and my mom went to the store and came back and found me passed out on the sofa. She called 911 and they found that my blood sugar was only 19. I spent 5 days in the hospital.

The most alive I've ever felt? Walking down Penny Lane in Liverpool on a sunny June day in 1984. Just magical.

[Shrike47]

3. Dying? Childbirth with my first child. And I did not find it exhilarating.

Alive? Riding pillion on a motorcycle on the beach north of Mazatlan, singing. It was magic.

[HuckleB]

4. Almost all people come close to possible death multiple times.

There is nothing unusual about that. Still, a good story is a good story.

[KamaAina]

5. Hearing a very dynamic female speaker at a conference seven years ago

I felt alive, all right. For about an hour and a half. Over lunch it emerged that she had a lover. They are now married. They were even on a magazine cover that was displayed in my office!

[Contrary1]

6. Watching Shawshank Redemption while undergoing chemo...

These lines from the movie: Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

I was feeling so ready to give up, but I found strength from this, and I felt alive. And the feeling has stayed with me.

[Dr. Xavier]

7. In the previous discussion I talked about

saving a man's life by performing CPR, it happened at a fish fry and he had suffered anacephalic (sp?) shock. I was called over because at the time, I was head of the group doing the dinner. A voice in my head kept saying do something... all these people kept saying don't do anything but I knew that I had to do something. So I performed CPR with no training, just over the years had read certain things, picked up info (I'm like a sponge when it comes to stuff like that)... he came to and then the EMTs arrived and took over... the rest of the weekend was like a dream but Monday morning came and I was driving to work and I was a new person... never felt so alive... I saw everything in a new light... it was miraculous and I know that's a cliche but it was...
I had done other things that make me feel like I'm home: my first trial, camping out in the desert, being on my bike in the middle of nowhere but those things pale in comparison to saving a person's life... its probably the male version of giving birth, just not as painful...