Some rather disturbing questions keep running through my head. This time, I couldn't sleep through it, and I'm not likely to forget them.A rather life-changing event has me asking some both troubling and freeing questions. I've waffled, in my life, about the possibility of a heaven. Sometimes, I'm so sure that there is a god out there watching out for [or sometimes teaching in a rather auspicious way] us. Some events seem too coincidental for it to all happen by chance. Sometimes, it almost seems like an invisible hand has guided me to a specific place or time in my life. Sometimes, it almost seems as if there has been someone whispering in my ear to make a certain choice.
In other times, it's hard to believe that there is this benevolent being out there somewhere after all of the horror that occurs in the world. I'm not even selfishly thinking of myself; I'm thinking of babies that starve to death, or good people who are living hard lives. I'm thinking of my stepfather's father leaving the home he shared with his wife to move into a nursing home in Texas to live out his life.
There has to be something after all of this, doesn't there? There has to be something waiting for those who have lived these long full lives, right? There has to be a reward for him, a place for him to rejoin his recently deceased wife, right?
You don't just blink out of existence the last time you close your eyes, do you? That's so frightening to believe. What if there is nothing out there? What if the whole meaning in life is to actually live? What if God didn't create us, but instead, we evolved, and this is it?
That is such a frightening thought that it almost seems as if the natural defense mechanism would be to deny it as being true. It almost seems logical that 90% of the world would then believe that there is a higher power, there is something beyond this life.
My great uncle died last night, in his sleep. I'm upset about it, of course, but the thought that has been running through my head until I couldn't sleep tonight is, "I wonder who is going to take care of his dog. His dog was his life."
I was rather numb to the big picture that was staring me in the face. I was so damn worried about that dog. Why was I worried about the dog? Well, number one, I don't trust my family to take in the dog if no one else will...and number two, it's almost as if taking in the dog would help me believe that he isn't really gone.
It's like...if I know that the dog lives on in a happy home, my uncle will still be there and I won't have to ask myself those questions. If the dog lives on, I don't have the face the facts that I should've written more. I should've sent more pictures, etc.
The man went as peacefully as one can go. He died in his sleep at a ripe old age of 81. But what if he closed his eyes, breathed his last breath, and then there was nothing?
And now that I ask myself that, I'm wondering if I can sleep at night with the options tossing and turning in my head.
