It gets hard to Remember these things after several days.

It’s been a few days and like I mentioned it’s harder to remember significant events in retrospect. So I’ll try to summarize.

Monday: Class, work, staff meeting fun time. After staff meeting some friends of mine and I went to the Matador in Ballard and got nachos for a ridiculously low price. My friend Taylor Clark and I ate 2 plates as a team and while they were delicious…the second plate was not necessary. I think it was worth it though.

Then I came back to my floor. It was “PA appreciation day.” I got a card signed by most of my residents with notes saying how much they appreciate me. I actually shed a tear. It feels good to know that coming down on the end of the year people think I’m doing a good job and appreciate me.

Then I watched Smallville until about 3AM. Clark Kent is a dumbass. I’m going to spoil things, so if you are an avid fan who hasn’t seen through season 5…skip this paragraph. Okay. So he finally tells the girl he loves that he’s superman. Then he proposes to her. She says yes. The only downside is that she dies. See, Clark decided he wanted to be a regular man for awhile and lost his powers. Then he died and was brought back to life through some kind of strange alien process which costs another life in exchange. She was the exchange. At the moment that they’re engaged she drives on the road and dies in an accident. Clark cannot deal with reality so he gets a magic crystal from the fortress of solitude and tries again. Well what do you know, this time he manages to let his dad be killed in the process of changing what he does. That sucked. Okay, so I know that Jonathan Kent isn’t a real person, but it hit me hard when he died. I think in general that happens whenever people talk about people they love dying (even in the completely fictional realm of Smallville).

When people die whom you love it sucks alot. I realized in the process of hating Clark’s stupidity and wishing he hadn’t killed his dad that I don’t like it when people die. I don’t like having to say goodbye to people I love. I don’t like other people having to say goodbye to people they love either. Death is not a pleasant thing. Even for those whose loved ones die of old age, the process isn’t any easier. In essence we are forced to take a step back from our experience and live in a world of hurt as a response to death.

I guess I kind of understand why we have to die. People who don’t believe in God would say it’s a part of the way nature works. Things die they say. I find that to be an unsatisfying answer. Why would death feel so unnatural if it were meant to be a part of life? Why would every part of our being rebel against this occurence if we were meant to die? I guess that would mean that at some level biologically everyone and everything wants to live. Why? If it’s meant to die, why the fuss? That seems like a silly state of affairs to me. Random nature seems to be cruel. Without God it seems as though we live for no point. We strive towards this goal of “carpe diem” of seizing the day because the days are short. We live with the goal of living the best life we can… but if at the end of the day what we put in is meaningless in the sense that we die and that is the end…what is the worth in that? We seem to have done no more than earn a state of nothingness.

Some people might say that “well, you effect others who effect others…you did something by living well.” Okay sure. Even then, I think what they are emphasizing is the fact that we’re all going to live on through others. They emphasize the parts of us that are still around to ease the pain of our passing. Even in accepting death we are forced to emphasize life to be able to view it in anything but a depressing fatalistic sense. So, this really isn’t very satisfying.

I think though that death becomes something more when you look at it as a Christian. It is not the end. Not matter how tragic or sad, death (for everyone) becomes a kind of stepping stone (or lack thereof) into eternity. Into what we are meant to experience. The bible tells us that God’s intent was not pain and death, but that these were a result of our rebellion. Death is not and was not God’s goal with creation. It was not meant to be “the way things are”. Christ tells the thief on the cross that at his passing through death he will be with Christ “in Paradise”. Saint Francis of Assisi had a prayer that ends like this:

“For it is in giving that we receive, it is in forgiving that we are forgiven, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

It helps me to think about it this way. I don’t think it’s naive. For if in reality (to paraphrase CS Lewis) nothing on earth seems to satisfy my desire then it must be that I belong somewhere else. I am unfulfilled by the atheistic view of death. It leaves me wanting. It asks me to set aside something within me that screams with pain and anger and sadness at the event of death. Atheism asks me to become less human. It basically tells me that I should not mourn death because it’s all part of “the way things happen”. I just can’t do that.

The point of all this is to say that I’m tired of people dying. I don’t like it. What’s more I don’t like it being rationalized to me as “okay”. NO, it’s not okay. It’s really not. Death is not what we were intended to experience. I’m not saying people don’t die, I can accept that they do. I’m just saying that I will not be badgered into being “okay” with it because I don’t see that I have to.

It’s now too late to write anymore. I have a midterm tomorrow. Part 2 when I’m working at the office. You just wait.