Everything ends. Family, other relatives, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and you are all temporary. Everything your five senses can detect will end. There is no permanence. Eventually, everything becomes a non-sentient atom wandering through the billions of years of time and space. But before all that? SHIT HAPPENS.
As you go through life certain thoughts, words, and actions trigger unwanted, yet vivid memories. Depending on the particular memories, intense feelings may result. These feelings may lead you to actions that can be harmful to yourself or others. If those actions are harmful to someone, and you think of yourself as a good person, then shame and guilt will lead to depression. Depression often causes thoughts and feelings of hopelessness and hopelessness sometimes brings thoughts of self-destruction. If hopelessness and self-destruction become overpowering and lead to successful destruction, that personal chain reaction ends. However, if the destruction is unsuccessful, then the person having these experiences may be trapped in the never-ending loop that started at the beginning of this paragraph.
Generally speaking, once events start to go badly, they combine like chains of a malevolent Kudzu vine that grows and travels with you throughout your lifetime. The vine is your conscience, your moral and value system. Its leaves block the sunlight hampering your growth. The brightness and warmth of the sun diminish the older you get. The vine constantly opposes you. It rubs you raw, and you soak up its poison as punishment for all the perverted thoughts you’ve had, the disgusting and regretful actions you’ve participated in, the people you’ve hurt, the loved ones, and other family you’ve ignored. You go beyond the line of goodness that you shouldn’t have crossed, taking lives both figuratively and literally, being the victim of bad ideas or doctrines tattooed into your young malleable mind by parents, friends, teachers, and strangers. So, you start seeing skepticism as a curse word that may even be considered, by many, sacrilegious making you amenable to accepting fiction as fact, when skepticism is a friend to truth. A skeptic might say, I don’t think that statement is true. Can you show me proof that can be replicated? Seeing proof, the skeptic accepts the statement, but if there is no proof, then that statement can’t be accepted. It may be considered false until proof is offered. If I say that I grow carrots that I use for fuel in my car, what is the first thing a sane person with average intelligence will say? PROVE IT! If you can prove it, good. Now we have a new source of energy. My car is faster than yours. PROVE IT! My house was more expensive to buy than yours. PROVE IT! However, if we ask for proof in certain areas of belief we are treated disapprovingly.
Galileo’s skepticism led him to the truth that the Earth is not the center of our galaxy and that the sun is. The great minds of the past would not be as famous if it weren’t for the discoveries that originally started as skepticism. Scientists had a cornucopia of ‘food for thought’ and resulting skepticism about what was being called a fact. Unfortunately, unanswerable doubts can be upsetting. How many unproven beliefs are we so desperate to hang on to? Why is that? Fear? Pride? Indoctrination before we have a chance to develop our common sense and a healthy skepticism? Is it that we revert to our childhood and simplistically think that if mommy and daddy believed something then it must be true, so now I believe it? Unfortunately, that’s the child’s version of some inherited truths, but why would any adult, with common sense, logic and the ability to reason continue to think like that? The answer lies mostly in parental indoctrination of young minds that act like sponges soaking up everyday knowledge, including false knowledge.
If the holy Pope of Catholicism had been born in Iran (Islam), India (Hinduism), China (Buddhism), Israel (Jewish), north Africa, and the Middle East (Muslim) who would believe that that child would grow up being a Catholic? You’re not born to any religion, culture, tradition; you simply inherit it, accept it, then hang onto it no matter what the cost. It’s one of those ‘shit happens’ events, which lasts a lifetime, usually without question, without doubt, without truth, and the source of major conflicts throughout history and our present world. Shame on me for originally falling for that fiction, but I too inherited the religion of my family. Doubt simply came as an extension of common sense. Oh, but how desperate people are to believe in one faction or another. At least Roman, Greek, and Egyptian gods are entertaining myths, even though, at one time in history, to were real gods with vast populations of worshipers taking them seriously and praying to them.
Did I mention shame?
Shame is the father of guilt, sorrow, and anxiety, the three foods that feed the vine of your conscience that opposes your growth physically and mentally. That vine absorbs your evil deeds and flourishes. It feeds and grows with the constant food supply that you give it. You won’t feel it until you have time for serious introspection, for self-analysis, for the need to understand yourself. Who are you? Why do you do specific things and think certain ways? Where do your major beliefs come from? How did you become that way and, hardest of all, should you change? Towards the end of life, having more time is comforting. It’s when you’re not too busy for serious thoughts.
The older you get the tighter your conscience binds you. It’s often a punitive vine that takes decades of growth as your day-to-day negativeness in thoughts and deeds feeds it. It hobbles your ankles, coils around your shins, binds your thighs and it’s natural to think it’s just old age that slows you down. Undetected it slowly slithers and constricts around your chest, your lungs, and heart feeling the pressure, but still, you believe it’s only old age that causes the pain, the exhaustion. If it’s brain pain, the cause is not old age itself.
The young sprouts of that mother vine grow and get practice shackling your fingers (is it arthritis?). A punitive vine circles your wrists as firmly handcuffs do, and then the vine and its offshoots play the pain-game as young offshoots go under your crotch squeezing you painfully. You stagger as you walk, you are out of breath quickly, and your internal organs slowly fail.
The vine blinds you to joy, to happiness, to love. You stand before a clear, still puddle of rain and you see your countenance as young, happy, innocent, kind, playful, smiling with friends, comforted by parents, and you wonder, What the hell happened to me? Who the hell am I? Am I really what these people see? They can’t see much, just the external surface, like skin, but there’s no accurate view of your internal workings.
I, too, am like most people I meet. We’ve all built elaborate façades attached to our self-built houses. It’s the external view that we want people to see, to create good feelings and allay suspicions of unseen aspects of our characters. Our characters change throughout life. Someone could be a nice person for a decade then change suddenly, totally out of the character that people know. Is it the Cicada Effect? Cicadas are insects that lie dormant in the soil for a decade or more, then wake up to reproduce and die. Like mental aberrations, one day they don’t show themselves, but after years of dormancy, the aberrations reach fruition and become full-blown. One year you’re hardly aware of the slight changes, but years later the full-blown changes can control who you are. Nice guy for the first twenty or thirty years, then a wife abuser, criminal, killer. What was it that lay dormant inside me?
But behind that false front is where much is hidden, secrets are buried, lies are fortified by bigger lies. But it’s not as worrisome if you are keenly aware of it and can readily patch the facade. After all, it’s a universal human characteristic, and extremely rare to find an exception. Hell, no, I’m not one of those rare ones, nor have I ever met one. It’s just as true as everybody lies, or a vast majority of the population breaks the law every single day of their lives. Do you go over the speed limit? Did you bring your concealed handgun into the post office? Did you steal a person’s pencil, money, object, etc? Who can honestly deny that? Just like the universal truth that everyone lies, stands its close companion, ‘everyone has secrets,’ those things they don’t want others to know, even their parents, close friends, and family. The facade is too important. I know. I have my own. See how smart, wise, humorous, and talented I am? You do? To myself, I add, “And angry, but you can’t see that.” Well, isn’t that wonderful? But I owe the illusion to my fabulous façade. I’m so proud of it. It’s beautifully constructed, designed and painted. It even glows in the dark. Do you want to see it again? Allow me to show you. Just step over here where the light is better.
Now behind a person’s façade is their house. Mine has a cellar and an attic. Most people’s houses have cellars, [except Florida where the highest elevation is barely over three hundred feet.] We bury our true selves there, below ground, out of sight, secure from others who pry, who ask too many questions, who are too curious to know you better. No one is allowed there or, at least, not in your secret part of the cellar (under the workbench is best), or to open some tightly sealed boxes. When too many intrusive questions get asked, we take the nosey ones outside for another glorious look at our façade and the skillful workmanship of the external house as well. Show them the decorations, coordinated colors, the flower beds, the immaculately mowed lawn, the pretty lilac bushes, and shade trees. And you tell these nosey ones, “This beautiful, skillfully built house and well-maintained property are a reflection of me. Don’t you think so? Of course, you do. Who else could I be? Simply by looking at the house’s façade, you can conclude that I’m normal, I’m nice, I’m law-abiding, compassionate, and moral. You can see that, right? Of course, you can. It’s so obvious that I’m a squeaky clean, straight-arrow guy. You don’t believe me. Just ask our neighbors. They know me well. Our kids play together.” But secretly I’m thinking, they know my façade is wonderful, just as I know their façade is beautiful.
“Ask my pastor/priest and colleagues. They’ll surely tell you what a pristine character I am. You don’t have to hesitate. You can pat me on the back now.”
Like the cellar of disgust, there’s almost always a sad, haunted attic, your secure, private storage area of ghostly deeds and ghastly memories.
Truth is rare. Come on now. Don’t be infantile. As I said, it’s rare to find the truth when everyone lies during some personal interactions. You are constantly sifting the statements, motives, and desires to find evidence of truth and sincerity. And guess what? It’s so much easier to believe what someone says than work to find the truth. Life is hard, so let’s take the easiest way. We shouldn’t overthink this. It’s one of those situations reflected in the statements, “Be careful what you wish for,” or “You can’t believe everything they say or everything you read.” People, including me, believe hundreds of unsupported opinions. Mostly we never ask for a detailed explanation. Who wants to take the time? If you agree, you say so. If you disagree, you argue, but is your argument any more valid than the one you just rejected? Can you support it? Usually not. If you’ve been to any kind of get-togethers, you’ll hear so much bullshit that you’ll wish you wore hip-boots. Everyone has an opinion like everyone has an asshole. Most of those opinions you hear smell like their asshole is the place of origin.
I find that I want to talk less and listen more. People are interesting. I learn a lot from them by listening. I don’t learn much by talking. I already know the things that I know. I don’t know what someone else may say that may be interesting or helpful. People are mostly good, especially when they keep their mouths shut. See? I just called myself a ‘good guy.’ I am, you know. Just ask me. Do you believe me? Hell, it’s just easier to take my word for it. Good thing you can’t hear my internal laughter. Really, though, I’m a great guy…usually.
Unwanted or purposeful events in your long life have turned that clear, reflective pool into muddy water. You can’t see yourself anymore and you’re smart enough to be satisfied with that.
At times I daydream, or stare out into space, unaware of my immediate surroundings, my ears deaf, and I see thousands of flashing lights as they travel at the speed of light. Somehow, I can see inside those lights clearly, as if seeing a film in slow-motion, frame by frame. The good and the bad flash by me with pristine clarity. You concentrate on the bad and why not? It’s another human characteristic.
We look for anomalies, like hooks that catch our eyes. We want to correct errors, mistakes, to restore the order of certain patterns, to do and become better, to achieve more, to accumulate praise, to thwart embarrassment, scorn, and ridicule.
I’m old now and near the end of my life. In my final moments of grayness, and vagueness of thought and sight, I fall, but I’m mostly a good guy, so my final memories will be about my loved ones, not about egg yolks. I only have seconds remaining; no time for badness, I want goodness and love of family to be my last thoughts.
It’s now that the vine darkens, shrivels, uncoils, and falls off and I feel the exhilaration and lightness that the vine took from me, plus the joy, happiness, love for family and friends, the compassion and kindness that I could have used to better my life and improve the everyday dealings I had with the lives of all those around me, especially my immediate family.
As total darkness comes you feel joy at the death of that guilt vine, the punishing vine, your conscience, and you think, I’ll die after you do, and with that extra time, you have a portrait that develops in your failing mind of the family you love and keep protected in your heart and mind.
I’m now fading away permanently. Damn! Didn’t I say everything is temporary? Everything ends? How do I reconcile that contradiction? You do it. I’m too busy dying.
I won’t lie to myself; I won’t beg. I won’t be a hypocrite at the end of my life. I’ll fade away with my firm atheistic beliefs even stronger as oblivion treats me as non-existent, the same condition I was in before I was conceived. I can’t have existed before conception and I can’t exist after I die. That’s two times that I did not exist. Wow! I said something interesting after all. Just my opinion, of course. Sure, it’s a debatable statement.
Everything ends.
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