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What brain surgery taught me about the fragile gift of consciousness
There is a silence so profound it becomes its own kind of language.The night before my brain surgery, my wife and I sat across from each other in wordless stillness. No dramatic goodbyes. No last confessions. Just the quiet hum of time stretching between us.
We sat in our living room, on the off-white tweed couch. I ran my fingers along the seam, slowly, as if trying to memorize its texture. In that quiet room, dimly lit and strangely alive, I felt the shape of time itself. It wasn’t abstract. It wasn’t a number on a screen or the sweep of a clock’s hand. It felt real — like a second skin, like air thickening into water. I wasn’t counting the hours anymore; I was living inside them.
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What brain surgery taught me about the fragile gift of consciousness
After the trauma of brain surgery, Big Think writer Eric Markowitz discovered a kind of consciousness that lives in presence.
