So much to live for. That's what they say.
What, exactly, is there to live for? Further disillusionment? A slow fading of mental and physical faculties as the body takes what vitality it once gave?
Perhaps it's the future atrocities the human race will commit? The idiotic rhetoric of future pundits as they debate future decisions?
Why is it that the beautiful produced by humanity is the product of minds most in anguish?
Beauty is born of suffering. Is beauty composed of suffering?
All things have their opposite: for joy to exist sorrow must be known. Does that mean joy is meaningless without suffering? That we must inflict suffering on either ourselves or others to know what joy is?
What are joy and happiness but moments of amnesia as we hurtle toward death through a world built of suffering and violence?
The empty promises of Heaven ring hollow in churches built of mud, and the empty promises of mortal joy fly impotently in the inexorable faces of disease, cruelty, and death.
Everywhere are claims of happiness and nowhere are admissions that happiness might be nothing more than a phantom reflection of our lust for relevance, flickering ever before us but never within our grasp.
So much to live for. Consciousness is fleeting, and so ought we not observe keenly the horrors around us? Ought we not strive, through the sweat of our brows, to make something with out short days? Never mind that any sandy palaces we build will soon crumble beneath the waves of time. Never mind that all our knowledge and wonder, accumulated carefully, will be eaten by insects like any other piece of rancid flesh.
I occasionally doubt my ability to make a better world for my children to die and decay in.
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You write beautifully. i used to write beautifully. and paint and draw... used to. it's disturbing how much ofmy creativity disappeared when i started doing "better."
ReplyDeleteSo what if the joys of life are only temporary? Would you rather have not experienced any of them Dave? Would you say you'd rather have not existed and never spent these few moments with your wife and children? So what we all go to the grave and are no more? At least we lived and enjoyed those few things, even though they were largely outnumbered by struggles. It was better than nothing.
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