Last year at about this time, I went a little crazy. I took a notion to blindly and cluelessly cast about for something—anything—to light the darkness that my fiftieth birthday had brought uncomfortably close. Death. The Big Sleep. The end of existence.
But it was too overwhelming. In the end, I just put the whole idea aside and determined to set my focus on something else. Bought a business instead, which has proved quite the counter-balance to my tendency to wrestle with the unsolvable.
Which is not to say that I have been completely successful in putting that fear back into its Pandora’s box… I certainly don’t have the conscious time or mental energy to tackle issues as huge and amorphous as Death. But some nights, when my dwindling hormones have me doing the sweat-freeze-toss dance, my mind spirals down into that dark pit of questions with no answers. An intimidating place to find oneself in the middle of the night, when the veil between life and death seems the most gossamer.
My problem is, I just can’t buy the popular Western concept of the after-life—the Heaven and Hell upon which I cut my baby teeth. It all seems too simple. Too custom-made by and for what amounts to a mere minority of the mass of human culture-past present and future. But the idea of just…ceasing to exist…is something with which I am not particularly comfortable, either. Which is a pretentious way of saying it scares the bejeezus out of me.
This post has taken on a life of its own, and is coming out in fits and starts...so it's going to take me awhile to get to the point. How about you read this part and come back for the next chapters?
You keep writing I'll keep reading. I believe that death is a door. Maybe we rest and come back to learn more. Maybe we go on to design sunsets and supernovas. But, the adventure doesn't end here. Maybe it's just the beginning. If it is, we're in for a hell of a ride.
ReplyDeleteJackie
I agree with you. The Heaven and Hell thing is just to cut a dried. We are made of energy and doesn't physics teach us that energy cannot be destroyed?????? Energy does not die????? I guess the best thing is to concentrate on the here and now. Usually that is enough in itself to keep us all quessing!
ReplyDeleteI'll keep readng, too.
ReplyDeletehttp://searchthesea.blogspot.com/
I find myself thinking about death a whole heck of a lot more than I did 5 years ago. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I too think about the dwindling amount of time I have left! Scary and at the same time....so sad.
ReplyDeleteWhat I've discovered at over age fifty, is that I don't want to die, just yet. I'm not sure if it's because of feeling I've missed the mark on the 'things' I want to accomplish in this life ... or the fear of the unknown. I ask myself, 'am I to go on blindly believing?'
ReplyDeleteYou have hit the nail on the head, what many of us feel. How I would love to believe in all they have taught me at church. And I TRY to believe. But "trying" to believe means I don't really, doesn't it. But ceasing to exist? Doesn't seem possible either.
ReplyDeleteHere's a few words of wisdom from a woman not much older! I'm not ready to die -- so I refuse to think about it. I will think about it when it is staring me in the face. Being middle-aged and just that bit closer to the end is not so bad. It's trying to sleep through the night that is bad. ;)
ReplyDelete