DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL THOUGHTS
Dark Night of the Soul Thoughts
Maybe it’s Covid. Maybe it’s politics. Maybe it’s just old age, but my thoughts lately have been incredibly dark.
Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of humanity will be totally forgotten within a generation or two after their death. To be remembered, one has to do something very, very good, or very, very bad.
Maybe that’s why writer’s write. Subconsciously, we all want to be remembered. Maybe someday some poor sod will find one of my books in a second-hand store (if they still have those a hundred years from now) and read something I’ve written. Fine. But will they know ME? ME, my very own self, with all my quirks and beliefs and foibles? No.
So, what’s the point? What on earth could be the purpose behind these incredibly short and pathetic lives we lead?
I look at my life and know that I’ve truly not done a darn thing worth remembering. The only “good” thing I’ve ever done is to produce two rather fine human beings, who went on to produce other fine human beings like themselves. Beyond that, nothing.
I’ve lived an ordinary life. Certainly not lived the life I would have chosen, had I had the wherewithal to do so. All of the good I wanted to do in the world was somehow thwarted in one way or another. My planned trip to work with Mother Teresa in Calcutta? Sidelined by a back injury. My desire to go to New Orleans to help after the devastating floods? No money to even put enough gas in the car to get there. My desire to go to college and become a therapist? I had children to raise and no money to go.
We go about life yammering about how “precious” life is, and I sometimes wonder if that is even true. Or are we just cockroaches, scrambling about this life, looking for our next meal, and anticipating being squished by God’s foot at any moment. Do our lives really even MEAN anything at all?
Do my opinions on anything mean anything? Do my actions mean anything? Do my beliefs about anything mean anything? In the grand scheme of things, probably not. Do I mean anything, in the grand scheme of things? Probably not.
Why?
Why? Why? Why?
Why are we even here? What is the purpose of this existence? Why are we even here? Lord knows we’ve screwed up the land we live on, and the water we drink, and the air that we breathe. I wouldn’t blame God a bit if He squished us all like the cockroaches we are and started all over.
So, how does God figure in all this? It is tempting to believe that God is simply a figment of our imaginations, just a Supreme Being that we created to somehow justify and explain our existence. But, I can’t quite go there. I’ve seen too many instances in my life where God has indeed been present to walk down that road.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I have no desire to shed this earthly husk and find out what’s beyond the Great Divide. My fear is not that of hell. My fear is that there is nothing beyond the Great Divide. That the person I am will simply cease to exist. And if that is true, then our lives, our loves, or accomplishments (if any) really will have been in vain. For that to be true, then our lives truly are purposeless, and there is no meaning to anything in this world.
So, where do I find my hope?
I look at the world, and I despair. We have mucked it up so badly. People seem meaner than ever, more angry, more violent, more wicked. We are all so opinionated about things that ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, don’t matter at all.
So, why should I care? Why should I care that people are dying at an alarming rate from a disease we pretty much brought on ourselves? Why should I care that people are living on the street or in their cars because they can’t afford a home? Why should I care who the hell is president? None of it means anything anyway. In a hundred years, history will look back at this time, and we’ll just be a chapter in a book, no more real to those living then than hundred-year-old history seems to us now.
My sister has always said I was an “incurable optimist.” I hope she’s right. I want to believe that our lives matter. That they may not matter to anyone in a hundred years, or even past those who remember us after we’re dead, but that they matter to us NOW. I have to believe that every kindness shown, every prayer sent aloft, every good thought must somehow emanate into a Great Good that we cannot even fathom exists.
I have to believe in the Greater Good, in all the ways It manifests itself. I have to believe that life has meaning beyond my pitiful little attempts to understand it. And beyond all reason, I have to believe that there IS something on the Other Side, and that whatever passes for a soul in this body does not cease completely to exist.
Perhaps my ultimate hope is in the words of Jesus, who said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
So, I guess maybe I just have to see myself as a seed. I have to believe that our seemingly meaningless lives actually matter in the grand scheme of things.
Sometimes, it’s just hard to do.
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