Table of Contents
I feel a pull towards rage, all of a sudden; that all life has been this year is despondence or anger. Both natural and reasonable reactions, I suppose, all things considered – but neither will yield any good, and neither are a place I wish to remain.
And what do I rage at? I don’t even know. Part of me wants to curse a God I don’t believe in, as the unfairness of the world cuts its sordid stamp into the more sensitive parts of my heart. The world is becoming a more empty place of late, death ever more proximate stealing from life a steady stream of those whom I did not want to lose – most lately, a dear uncle.
I write this, now, in the immediate wake of the news that a friend – not the first in this same cursed year – has suffered a stroke. As I turn these thoughts into words he is being rushed into hospital. What comes next is not for me to know – he may sleep through eternity from this night, or he may not.
This laced pessimism and recurrent fury at the injustice of it all characterises the creed of a person who I do not wish to be, though. And this bothers me. I did not want to lose sight of wonder and beauty, wallowing in blackness and hopelessness for my finite time. But lately I have found myself unable to appreciate much of anything. I try not to grow resentful, but I do resent so much of what life has become.
Some may seek to console my by way of saying that, supposing God has a part to play in this, there’s a lesson in it about the value of life, and its fragility. I retort, a lesson I did not need teaching; a fact about which I was painfully and acutely already aware, and had learned hard long before this, also by death.
I struggle to see the perfection in a God that built this world. That we have to die is an unmitigated tragedy in itself, but the manner in which darkness takes us is cruel beyond defence. Cancer, a stroke – as in this case – and more besides, an agonising demise that strips you of your dignity and then your very self; there is a malice in this I can’t reconcile with perfection. It doesn’t belong here.
