Jaded?

I‘ve touched on this before, but I have to try and flesh it out again: namely, the absurdity of being alive.

Here we are, all 8 billion-plus of us, thrown into the mix at some point, with absolutely no say in whether or not we came to exist, all trying to make it through the day, all expected to cope, to work, to serve and protect and be responsible and get along and find a way to survive. We had no say in any of these matters—whether or not we even wanted to take it all on. Oh, many of us do once we’re here, but the initial event of our arrival and existence was out of our hands.

It reminds me of the story my father told us about how he learned to swim—his dad threw him in a pond by their house, when he wasn’t even two years old. I don’t know if that’s true or if I dreamed it at some point, but he could swim like a fish, so maybe even at that tender age he decided he’d rather swim than sink. Or maybe he was just naturally buoyant.

I guess the thing I keep wrestling with is that there is a certain coldness to human existence. We may have the luxury of feeling entitled, we may get lucky and be born into stable families with loving parents, our ways being paved, certain rough edges being smoothed along the way. But there is enough misery and pain and unwarranted suffering to get one thinking that life isn’t a gift, our presence here on this tiny orb isn’t some pre-ordained miracle—it wasn’t “in the stars” or destiny or anything else that makes for a shmaltzy Hallmark movie.

Parents watch their 3-year-old daughter fade away from cancer, or get word that a shooter has taken the life of their 4^th grader at school, or grandparents die in the rubble of bombed out housing because religious zealots and warmongers refuse to work things out. Or another slaughter unfolds somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa because there are too many people living on terrain which can’t sustain them, and because humans are just more sophisticated animals with basic instincts for survival and an urge to dominate.

There’s nothing magic about this life. There are no givens, which doesn’t mean we can’t feel loved, or be inspired, or awestruck, or moved by the beauty of a sunset or the serenity of a warm Spring day. It just means that, from the get-go, there is no fairness, no blue print beyond being born, living some sort of long or abbreviated life, and dying. What happens to us between the beginning and the end is dependent on a million different things.