(*)

 

Sometimes, God-there-is-no-God, I just don’t see any purpose to anything (an exaggeration, but you get my drift, I’m sure).  Sometimes, I think we human beings were a terrible mistake; a curse upon this planet to ourselves and all the other creatures; also, to the land, the waters, the air.

We are a self-involved, self-serving, self-indulgent, self-congratulatory, self-important, Self-ish waste of evolutionary energy.  All that we create is for the attention, praise and adoration from others, unless it is for their subjugation or annihilation or enslavement.  What good are we?

Sometimes, I don’t want to be human.  Sometimes, I don’t want to be me.  Sometimes, I don’t want to be.

But, what else could I be?  What purpose could I serve?  What purpose does a life have, anyway?  Maybe (probably) there is no meaning or purpose to life and deep inside the darkest corner of our brains we know this – it is all moot.  Perhaps Life has no more significance than a flea’s fart, if even that much.  Yet we continue the struggle to give life a speck of significance, of meaning or purpose.  We search for joy, for laughter, for happiness, for bliss, for transcendence.  For Love, that other insignificant mystery, source of more pain than gladness; a thing more elusive than chasing a shadow or a sunbeam.

I have a hunger for something I can’t name, haven’t seen or tasted or held or heard or smelled; something that does not exist, not even in my imagination.  It is this yearning for the inexplicable, for the unsayable non-existent that led to humanity’s creation of gods and goddesses, of God-there-is-no-God, Allah, Buddha and all the other Masters of the Universe. 

Know what I think all the Masters of the Universe are?  A big black hole leading to Absolute Zero, that state wherein no Life can exist - no sun, no constellations, no thought, no pain, no gladness, no sadness, no pointless ruminations on a dreary, wet, cold Friday night of no light – or Light.  No yearnings, no words, no sight, no response, no reactions.  No being.

What’s it all about, Alfie? 

I'm going to fix a cup of coffee, go out on the back steps, sit in the almost-pitch dark and watch the steam rise from my cup to enjoin the rainful night air.  Going to listen to the plip-plip, plick-plop of raindrops onto the roof, the metal gutter, the sidewalk, the alley's blacktop.  Going to close my eyes and picture the sound of tires spraying water onto everything the cars pass.  Going to listen to birds snoring and fleas farting.  Going to feel every ache in every bone, in every muscle, in every cell of my body, and be grateful that I can.  When I finish that cup of coffee, I expect you to have an answer for me, God-there-is-no-God...okay?


(*)Photo:From Wikipedia article on black hole: Simulated view of a black hole in front of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The ratio between the black hole Schwarzschild radius and the observer distance to it is 1:9. Of note is the gravitational lensing effect known as an Einstein ring, which produces a set of two fairly bright and large but highly distorted images of the Cloud as compared to its actual angular size.