Tuesday 22 March 2005

Pic of the day: Sunset.

Weird days

It feels strange, not knowing what's wrong with me and whether I'll get better or worse. I know that right now, there are others who are worse off than me. As long as I can absorb water, I should be able to live for several weeks at the very least, plenty of time to find out what it is and initiate treatment if it can be treated. On the other hand, if this is something that could rupture or somesuch, I might be gone before I get up another entry. That's a sobering thought.

Despite this, I just go on with my life. I go to work every day and work pretty much my full 90% day as I've done the last few years. I go home, I play the usual computer games (Sim2 University and City of Heroes), read and write livejournal and newsgroups, write my diary. Even women still look attractive. It is as if I am in the middle of life, not with one hand on the doorknob.

***

But what else should I do? I suppose I could read a lot in the Bible, and kneel in prayer till my knees hurt. But I've already read the Bible, and it says: "You serpent-spawn, who taught you to flee from the coming wrath?" (That's John the Baptist, one of the certified good guys, talking to the scribes who came to be baptized.) If I suddenly try to impress God with newfound religious fervor now that I'm under pressure, it's not likely to fool Him. He knows just as well as I that the way I act when I feel free is the way I am in my heart. I guess when I panic it can't be helped that I pray more intensely and personally, but as long as I'm in a "cold state" of rational thought, I know that such exertions are fooling no one except possibly myself.

Even so, a sense of pointlessness seeps in while I try to level up my 69th hero, and I quit the game earlier than I usually do. Thoughts of others who are seeing hard times come more easily to me now as well.

When it comes down to it, I realize now, I was no better than this. The choices I made were my own. If I was tempted, I was no more so than others. I have lived my life in the human condition, and there was nothing special about it except the many unusual choices I made. I unfolded what was my true nature. When I am now facing these days alone, it is because at heart I was not a very social creature. When many of my habits are not meaningful under the perspective of eternity, it is because I liked that kind of habits and did not much care for other ones. "We are getting what our deeds deserve." When did it become this clear?

If I return to full health - and this too could easily happen - I would almost certainly return to the same kind of life I have lived. Perhaps a bit more perspective on the brevity of life and what I want to accomplish in the flesh, for a while. But I would most assuredly like to play computer games. I would most assuredly not seek out people and try to make them like me. And I would not live the life of a true saint, getting up early in the morning to pray for lots of people and ponder the Word of God. It would be nice, wouldn't it, if I were that kind of person? Well, my few Christian readers would presumably think so, while others might like me to partake in carnal pleasures in good company, for all I know. But none of these is going to happen. Because this is who I became - presumably, this is who I was inside from the very start.

***

After six years, I still don't know why I write this column. At first it was clearly just a letter to my friends and family. And I would not mind if my few friends and family members read this as well. It may seem that I have entirely forgotten you, but I'm not the one who never writes. I write pretty much daily. OK, I guess those blue and grey entries don't really count for that ... Still. If you want to know me, you can still get to know me better than I will ever know you. Probably better than you knew your own parents. Possibly, if you're extroverted, better than you have known yourself. If I have accomplished anything in my life, this may be it. Although it doesn't seem a lot of people have taken advantage of it. I'm not sure what else I could do, though. This is my life. It's yours for the safekeeping or forgetting. I did not willingly lie to you, although I did not tell everything, I thought and still think that it averages out. The things I skipped were not all good or all bad, all honorable or all shameful.

If I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I have been untrue,
I hope you know it was never to you.

Leonard Cohen: Bird on a wire, still a good candidate as theme song for my life.

I like to believe that some of my grey entries have made people think. Under doubt I consider this a good thing. Not for all, but I don't think those would have found their way here. I can see how some of those entries may cause despair, but I don't think this would happen. In fact, even those that was intended to make people worry, didn't. For years I have warned about the way the American economy in particular was going over the abyss, and the risks of partying on credit the way the nation is doing and most people in it. Despite this, none that I know has taken it to heart. No doubt they believe that everything will be just fine, much the same way that I secretly thought that everything would be just fine with my life until I was 70.

Perhaps this simply is the human condition, to believe at the deepest of hearts that we live in a loving, caring universe that will make everything allright. And those who don't believe that, are diagnosed with depression and given medication. And perhaps, in the end, it is even the truth. I don't know. If not, who is this invisible presence that so often seems to watch over my shoulder like a gentle parent or older brother looking after me? Do I really have the power to create and maintain something like that myself?

When Socrates drank the cup of poison to which he was sentenced, he spoke to his friends about just such a presence in his life: "If it was something bad I was going toward, would not the voice have warned me?" Now for myself, I haven't had such an assurance when facing the end. But then again, my time had not come either. I still suspect that I am going to die screaming or at least whimpering, whether it be this week or fifty years from now. Physical bravery has never set me apart. But I am not entirely sure. If that Presence is there by my side at the last, we may yet go through the last door together. And then I'll learn for sure whether I created it, or It created me.

But if it's up to me, there are millions of things I'd like to learn before that. It's not like eternity will be too short if I arrive a little late...