If These Are the Last Words I Write
“There is no end to grief; that’s how I know there is no end to love.” – Bono
My time on Earth has been longer than most. I don’t know if this is a blessing or a curse. My life has been full of both, a mixed bag like anyone. I have had loving family and friends, creative outlets, a series of adventures, and material abundance, for which I am thankful. But I am bent toward neuroticism, highly sensitive to the bad, including chronic sickness, addiction, and loneliness. Whether or not these things were actually good or bad, I can’t say. Maybe they were just the draw of the cards.
God gets blamed for both, and His character judged according to the balance. But He is too far above me to be held accountable by me. He will not offer a defense. Any motivation, intentions, or plans He has are the impossible riddle at which I am left to guess.
I am not fond of the show He runs. There is joy and hope in this world, but just enough to increase the pain when it is taken away. Sooner or later, everything is taken away. Beauty, opportunity, enjoyment – everything is under a constant, imminent threat of extinction. I understand that I have been far more blessed (materially and otherwise) than the majority of people. But we are all Sisyphus, charged with a futile task, and since that is not enough, it is also made difficult and unpleasant. The cards are stacked against us. All we can do is try our best to weigh them a little more in our favor. But there are no guarantees, and neither time nor luck are on our side.
God promises goodness, guidance, protection, and provision, but I see none of this. Beyond a few brief moments, I have not known the joy or peace of God. What I have known is His silence.
The funny thing is, though I’m not generally fond of this human experience, I want more of it. Not more time, but more experience. I would have liked to create art at the level of which I am capable and seen others touched by it. But there were people who did – who scaled Mount Olympus to sit with Elvis, Cash, Brando, and Marilyn – and I don’t have to be one of them. I would have liked more adventures, to have seen more places: Ireland, Montmartre, the Caribbean. I would have liked to have loved and been loved more, but none of this matters. There would never have been enough. I could wish for things to be different, but there would always be something, and if there wasn’t, I would be bored and would wish to change that.
I’m grateful for the people who loved me, for the people I loved, and I am sorry I did not love them better. I’m grateful for watching movies and Broadway plays, hearing Sarah Brightman’s voice and seeing U2 in concert. I’m grateful for snowboarding, driving too fast, eating fresh fruit, good haircuts, good stories, good conversation. For all the pain, I’m grateful to have been part of the bloody miracle of life.
I still don’t know what our job is, the eight billion conscious souls reaching for eternity. I don’t know if I did it badly or well, or if it mattered. But it mattered to me.
I’m trying to write something useful and summative, but my writing becomes as vague, all-encompassing, and meaningless as my prayers. Maybe the futility of writing is just a symbol of all the futility that came before. Maybe it is just amalgamated into the Story along with everything else – simultaneously integral and irrelevant.
But I can not end with my own chaos and confusion, or a despair masquerading as fatalism. Even in the coldest gulag or the most existential of crises, we search for meaning, hope, and the beauty Dostoevsky said will save the world. It is there even when we wish it wasn’t so we could more justifiably curse the Cosmos. It is there in the privileged boredom and debauchery of the Upper East Side and the squalor of a raped African village. In ancient Egypt when Pharaoh was god and the twenty-first century when god was dead. It is there in a bleak midwinter when those walking in darkness saw a great light. For unto us is born this day in the City of David, a Savior who is Christ the Lord. These words have rippled through the ages as a beacon of irrational hope that can never be extinguished and if these are the last words I write, they will be enough.
J.
Feb. 14, 2023