What brain surgery taught me about the fragile gift of consciousness

Summary

Sign up for The Nightcrawler Newsletter A weekly collection of thought-provoking articles on tech, innovation, and long-term investing from Nightview Capital’s Eric Markowitz. Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. 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.I looked at my wife. Her eyes — soulful, brown, impossibly beautiful — met mine. I had looked into them thousands of times before, but in that moment, I wondered: Had I ever really seen them?The doctors had just delivered the news of a lesion nestled deep in my cerebellum. If it was cancer — and if I survived surgery — I might have three months to live. There was a sliver of hope it was something else. But the odds weren’t kind.And yet, hours before surgery, with death still in the room, I didn’t feel fear. I felt something quieter. Stranger. I felt connected. To her eyes. To my breath. To the weight of my feet against the floor. To the wind brushing the window. Even to our cat, oblivious, licking her paws in perfect peace.The world had never looked so alive. Every detail sharpened, sacred. Time no longer moved. It hovered. Held. The future dissolved. The past let go. All that remained was one long, luminous moment. And in that moment, I was tethered — to her hand, to the stars, to everything. I was, finally, conscious.Upstairs, in a crib painted white, our 18-month-o...