woke up late for 9am japanese studies tutorial this morning! can't believe how i thought the tutorial was at 10am. arghh. school. just goes to show how my brain isn't cut out for school after long breaks. term break was a good week long, but in my opinion - TOO DARN SHORT for my mental wellbeing. heh. had no time to rest AND study! only managed to rest here and there.

and as proof of my scatter-brainedness when i awake with a rude shock, i forgot to bring my matric card with my this morning. i hateeeeeeee it when i leave my card in my room. then i have to tag along behind some fellow hallmate in the hopes that they're going my way.

slept a good two hours in the afternoon just now. and had several rather random conversations with God as i drifted in and out of sleep. sigh i had big plans for today initially, but i whiled away the earlier part of the afternoon watching cycle 3 of ANTM and the later part sleeping.

i was just thinking about it - sleep is such a miracle. you lose complete consciousness for that period of time after you close your eyes and your mind wanders off. it usually takes some time between you closing your eyes and your consciousness dwindling, but that period of time is when one falls into sleep. like a wave rushing over your thoughts, covering them in blackness until, - nothing. you lose consciousness, almost as if you cease to exist for that span of time. i imagine dying would be somewhat like that, except that the process might or might not be more painful. someone once said that he wasn't afraid of death, only the process of dying. i totally agree. i don't think i'd be quite that terrified of death itself, honestly. but it's the process of dying that i have so much trouble thinking about because no one likes to travel to distant, far-off places alone without company. when you die, it's a journey your soul makes out of your earthly body, it's a journey none of your earthly companions can follow you on, even if they were by your side when you died. maybe that's why people want to die surrounded by their loved ones. it's like, if you have to travel alone, fly out of the country alone, you'd want your loved ones the nearest they can be before they have to leave you and you step through the airport gate, right?

so to conclude, i just realised what the deepest human fear is: it's not death per se, it's loneliness. being alone scares people, and it's fundamentally the fear of being alone that makes people fear death. after all, when you're leaving this world for a better one, why should you fear the better one? i think it's precisely because we're all scared of being left alone, and hence we're scared of the process of dying, the journey the soul takes on that its earthly companions cannot come on. something just comforted me though, the thought that the angels will be with me as i embark on the next leg of my eternal life as i die - makes me not quite so terrified of dying now.