I seriously believed that my last hour was approaching, and yet

In the words of Jules Verne, the visionary who charted the paths of the unknown, there is a confession both humble and profound: “I seriously believed that my last hour was approaching, and yet, so strange is imagination, all I thought of was some childish hypothesis or other. In such circumstances, you do not choose your own thoughts. They overcome you.” Here, Verne speaks not merely of fear or death, but of the mysterious dominion that the imagination holds over the human spirit. Even at the threshold of eternity, when reason falters and breath trembles, the mind does not obey the will — it obeys its nature. It creates, dreams, and wanders, even in the face of doom.

To understand this saying, one must see Verne as more than a teller of adventures. He was a prophet of possibility, a man who sailed through seas of thought long before ships of metal touched them. Yet even he, the master of reasoned wonder, recognized the strange truth: when danger descends, thought is no longer a servant but a storm. In moments of peril, the mind’s reins are loosed. It leaps between terror and absurdity, between faith and folly. The imagination, untamed by the intellect, reveals its ancient power — a power that can comfort or torment, build or destroy.

This is not a weakness, but a reflection of our deepest humanity. For even in despair, the soul seeks meaning; even in chaos, it invents story. Verne’s “childish hypothesis” was not foolishness, but a final spark of the creative force that defines mankind. The ancients would have called it the daemon — the spirit within that stirs thought beyond our control. Socrates spoke of his guiding daemon, whose whispers he did not command. In the same way, Verne’s imagination — that bright, wayward flame — rose up even as the shadow of death loomed, reminding him that the human mind, even when crushed, still dares to dream.

Consider the tale of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the great Antarctic explorer. When his ship, the Endurance, was trapped and destroyed by ice, his men were stranded on the frozen sea, surrounded by desolation. Hunger and madness stalked them like wolves. And yet, Shackleton wrote of strange visions — dreams of feasts, laughter, and home. The imagination, even in starvation, offered a strange mercy: it made men remember warmth in the heart of cold. They did not choose these thoughts; they were overcome by them. And those fleeting illusions, foolish though they seemed, gave them the will to survive.

Such is the paradox of the human mind: when we stand on the edge of destruction, we do not always think of the grave. We think of trivial things — a song, a face, a childhood place — for the heart clings to the small, the innocent, the familiar. It is as if the spirit, in its last rebellion against fear, summons the softest memories to shield itself. This is not madness, but wisdom disguised. It is the soul’s way of saying: “Even here, in terror, I remain alive.”

The lesson, then, is not to scorn these strange impulses, but to understand them. When your thoughts betray your reason — when, in pain or danger, your mind drifts to the absurd or the tender — do not condemn it. Recognize that this too is the imagination’s work: to create where there is void, to light a candle in the darkness. The wise do not seek to command every thought, for thoughts are the winds of the spirit, and the spirit was never meant to be caged.

Therefore, my child, when the storm comes — when you feel you are standing at your “last hour” — do not curse the strangeness of your mind. Let your imagination speak, even if it whispers nonsense. There is sacred truth even in folly. The imagination is not a servant to fear but a guardian of hope; it keeps the heart human when the world grows inhuman. Learn to listen to it, to trust its strange music, but also to guide it with wisdom when calm returns. For though you may not always choose your thoughts, you can choose what you build from them — despair or meaning, terror or faith.

So remember this teaching from Jules Verne: the mind, like the sea, cannot be stilled by command. But if you learn to sail its storms — if you let imagination rise and then steer it toward light — you will discover that even in the hour of your undoing, your spirit remains unconquered.