If you want to make yourself crazy, think about death. I don’t mean the manner in which you will ultimately die. In that regard there are really only two possibilities, you go quickly or you linger; you either die instantly from a piano that crushes you on the congested and cacophonous streets of New York city while on your way to see a play (which you obviously will not see), or you linger interminably while insidious legions of cancer cells eat your body from the inside out.
No, we’re all going to die. It is merely a question on how, and for the dyspeptic, when.
It’s what comes next that has the ability to turn the hair follicles gray. I mean what if the Catholics are right? Thou shalt not kill, they tell us. But I have killed. I’ve killed, either intentionally or by accident, hundreds if not thousands of bugs, from irredeemably putrid and foul flies, to vampirous mosquitos, to the incineration of ants (via a magnifying glass, what boy has not salivated at such lurid serial killing).
Thou shalt not kill. They don’t specify what, exactly is not to be killed. It is assumed you are not supposed to kill each other, but everything else is pretty much fair game. But what if they got this part of the Thou shalt not kill edict wrong. What if, as I believe, God does not discriminate? What if, to him, killing is killing? It’s not what you kill, but the act of killing itself. That would mean we would all have the dubious pleasure or burning in Hell for an eternity when we finally shuffle off this mortal coil, kick the bucket, bite the dust, pass on, and die. My sister saved me when I was a child and my right pants leg caught on fire. I escaped with a scar on that leg the size of the palm of your hand, and whereas I don’t remember a lot about the event, I do remember that it was painful. And yet as painful as it was I would guess an eternity of fiery immolation would probably be more painful still. I don’t know that for sure, obviously, I’m just guessing.
And of course we all hear about the Muslim afterlife so many of these terrorists seem intent upon securing for themselves, that afterlife in which they will apparently have access to a finite number of willing and able virgins.
On the surface that might sound appealing, but there is something these terrorists, and anyone else lusting after that particular orgiastic after life, should consider when it comes to those nubile young wenches. How long do you suppose they will actually be able to keep you interested? A year maybe? Two? Ten? That might seem like a long time, but remember, we’re talking an eternity here. The Hindus have a palpable description of eternity. It is the amount of time it would take, using the swipe of a feather, to reduce the Himalayas to a single grain of sand. You get a feeling for eternity when you look at it that way.
So after the glow is gone what do you do with the rest of eternity? And what if, just what if, there is some unspoken consequence awaiting you when you do, as you certainly will, lose interest in those sullen sirens. Maybe it starts to get a little toasty after that, if you follow my train of thought.
OK, so maybe you’re an atheists or an agnostic, and you either simply don’t believe in God, or think you might, but no one has offered you any definitive proof of his existence (I would offer a Solar eclipse as that proof. Consider, it is the relative distances of the sun and moon from each other and the size of the moon relative to the sun that allows an eclipse to occur. I find it difficult to believe this is mere coincidence). For them death is perhaps merely a cessation of life, the blackness of sleeping without the dreaming.
Sure, I guess that has as much validity as any other after life existence, except that it seems to me it would have been a fairly wasted effort on the part of God to give a being existence and (purported) intelligence for seventy or eighty or ninety years and then snuff out that existence without any opportunity for a second chance to do better, or to move onto a higher plane or existence. One might ask, why bother, especially if the lifetime of a man is to God what the lifetime of a Mayfly might be to a man.
And of course there will be those who ask, “but what about the good stuff?” Right. Eternal salvation. Basking in the glow of God’s grace. Once again, we’re talking about an eternity here. How long before even that gets old?
As you can see I’m driving myself crazy here. This is one of those things that, once you start thinking about it, it tends to get out of hand. So I think I’ll just stop here. I could go on, and I probably will at some point, but for now I’ll let you get back to sleep (or maybe you should wake up if you’ve been reading this-WAKE UP!!!!!).
