The French use the term “little death” to mean “the brief loss or weakening of consciousness” and in modern usage refers specifically to “the sensation of orgasm as likened to death.”
It’s as evocative as it is provocative.
The little death not only alludes to the loss of consciousness that can happen in sex, or sleep, but also signifies a break in a the timeline of life.
A pause.
A reset.
A point in time.
Before it, you lived one life. After it, another.
Because you passed through a little death. And a little rebirth.
I just finished watching Fantasia 2000 with my kids. The last segment, set to Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, is a beautiful re-imagining of this birth, death, and rebirth cycle that forms a part of every life.
Sometimes, the death and rebirth follow a natural cycle, as when winter comes, draws to a close, and spring emerges from below the snow-melt.
And other times, death and rebirth happen through the shock of catastrophe. Calamity descends, death engulfs, and rebirth is uncertain, slow, and painful.
Both are part of life.
You see, it’s not all about routines, habits, tasks, appointments, and productivity.
That’s all on the surface.
Sometimes, you have to go deeper, into the depths of hell.
So you can rise higher than you ever have before.