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Two hundred thousand blinks.
That’s how many it took Jean-Dominique Bauby — editor-in-chief of Elle and father of two — to write his memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
In it, Bauby describes — with clarity and irony — the paralysis he experienced after a stroke at age 43. After twenty days in a coma, he awoke trapped in his body — his “diving bell”: unable to move, speak, or swallow. His only exception was his left eyelid — his window to the world. With one blink meaning “yes,” two meaning “no,” he managed to communicate what it feels like to be locked in.
His story raises profound questions about consciousness — a concept as elusive as intelligence, and equally difficult to define or measure.
In recent years, neuroscience has joined psychology, philosophy, and religion in the study of consciousness — exploring what it means to be someone, and how consciousness relates to language, behaviour, and intelligence.
Are humans always conscious — even as newborns, during sleep, coma, or locked-in states?
And are we the only conscious beings — or could other animals, or even machines, be conscious too?
Bauby suggests that consciousness may exist in places we would never expect — and reminds us of the importance of curiosity, research, and communication in understanding the world and ourselves.