Through Derek Sivers, one of my great inspirations, I was introduced to David Eagleman’s book SUM. Sivers, known for, among other things, CD Baby, his inspiring talks in podcasts and YouTube videos, including memorable interviews with Tim Ferriss, regularly recommends this book as one of his favorites.
SUM is an intriguing collection of 40 short stories, each offering a unique vision of what may await us after death. The opening story, which bears the same title as the book, presents a fascinating hypothesis: in the afterlife, you relive your entire life, but not chronologically. Instead, all your experiences are regrouped by activity. For example, you sleep thirty years in a row, spend four years washing your hands, three weeks scratching behind your ears, three years brooding, two weeks coughing, 12 months picking out clothes, etc. Included in these systematic re-experiences, of course, is the time when you think about the afterlife. In which you contemplate what your life would be like if all the moments were randomly distributed…
Of all the stories, “Metamorphosis” made the deepest impression on me. It begins with a powerful passage:
“There are three deaths: the first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
So you wait in this lobby until the third death. There are long tables with coffee, tea, and cookies – you can help yourself. There are people here from all around the world, and you can try to strike up a conversation with whomever you’d like. Just be aware that your conversation may be interrupted at any moment by the Callers, who call out your conversations partner’s name to indicate there will never again be another remembrance of him by anyone on the Earth. Your partner slumps out, face like a shattered and re-glued plate, saddened even though he’s kindly told by the Callers that he’s off to a better place. No one knows where that better place is, or what it offers, because no one exiting through that door has returned to tell us. Tragically, many people leave just as their loved ones arrive, since the loved ones were the only ones doing the remembering. We all wag our heads at that typical timing.”
Interestingly, SUM was even adapted into an opera, as mentioned on Wikipedia. What struck me while reading was the sophisticated use of language. The vocabulary is noticeably more complex than in average English-language literature, which gives the book an added dimension.
Highly recommended!