I spent this weekend with my husband at the beach and it was fantastic. We walked through a secluded beach, watching tiny crabs scatter through the salt marsh, climbing over fallen palmetto trees and sitting in the warm sun watching sail boats pass by. We worked in the garden, planting a beautiful yellow jessamine and a few lillies and sat on the back porch with fresh caught shrimp. I was so happy.
And then, as it always does, Sunday night rolled around and I had to kiss my husband goodbye and make the long drive back to school in the dark. In these moments of incredible joy, I am struck with an inescapable piercing sadness. I desperately wanted to cling to that weekend, to stay in that place of timeless peace and love but I realized that no matter how beautiful my experiences are, they will always come to an end. Every moment, every relationship, every home and comfort will blossom and eventually die. At the end of everything, there is pain and death, and then nothing. It broke my heart.
This weekend, I fully understood the psychological need for heaven. I need to know that even though my moments of beauty and joy pass so quickly in this life, there is another life coming when happiness is not hovered over by the lurking cloud of ending. Otherwise, the greater the joy in the moment, the greater the pain experienced when it is over. While I have certainly heard the argument that without pain and suffering, we would not know joy and happiness, I have to disagree. For example, my husband and I have been living apart for years because he is in the military and I am finishing a degree. Some of our friends have told us this is a blessing in disguise because absence makes the heart grow fonder and we appreciate each other more. What is interesting to me is I have found quite the opposite. The more time we are able to spend together, the better our relationship becomes. I also have heard the argument that it is because our lives have an ending that they are meaningful; each day is ripe with purpose because we will only have it once. Yet, instead of bringing me comfort, this thought only stabs me. My life is counting down to nothingness and no matter how much purpose and love I experience in my few years alive, it will all come to a crashing end, leaving my loved ones in anguish with my passing.
As much as I want to though, I can't accept the Christian teaching, or really discern anything about the existence of a god. Is this necessary for an afterlife? Do we have this deep desire for nothing? Is there something I just cannot see?
The finality of death so difficult. I wish I had an easier answer--but I do believe death is the end of conscious life. My daughter told me, after my mom died, that she's going to grow up to become a scientist and cure death. That'd be good.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, I think the Buddhists have it right: we have to live in the present moment. We cannot put such great weight on how things "turn out" but must live in the now, in how things are. And surely the goodness of the past is at least as important as what will happen in the future? Why should our ultimate end hold more weight than our experience of the now, or than our joy in the past? So much of our experience of life is relative, which means that, to a certain extent, we can change how we perceive it. I believe we need to pay special attention to now; we need to celebrate goodness where we see it; and we need to be willing to tell ourselves the truth about death despite the fact that it is hard.
I've seen this kind of question a lot lately in the blogosphere, and wrote a blog on it myself, relating my own experiences of death and loss and my attempts at establishing meaning; if you're interested in checking it out, here's the link to the post: http://majesty-of-being.blogspot.com/2010/02/well-universe-is-everything-and-if-its.html
I loved your post about this topic. I am still trying ot get my head around the idea that each life has value unto itself and value by improving the lives it touches. I was discussing this issue on deconversion.com and one of the post-ers linked me to this great post from a parent trying to explain to his children what death would be like. http://parentingbeyondbelief.com/blog/?p=336
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