Waiting for God

I guess this is a function of turning 88 last December.  And what is the “This”? Well, “This” is noticing that folks are dying all around you.  Now, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. I mean, folks die every day, and famous folks seem to appear in my social media outlets with some frequency. Seems at least a few times every week, I note a posting in some newsie outlet that someone has just died.  Mostly, they are folks in their 70’s or 80’s. , but some times they are just in their 50s. Sad, very sad.  Well, it’s sad whenever someone dies, but to die in your 50s or 60s seems truly sad. The husband of a friend who is one of our favorite Farmers’ Market folks just died and we think he was in his 60s. The truly sad part of that passing is that when folks arrive in their mid-60s, they begin to imagine life without a daily truck’n off to work. Yeah, Retirement.  And assuming you have been reasonably careful, you can even imagine retiring with enough money on which to live.  So, dying right at that stage just seems like you were cheated by Life.  Takes the smile right off your face.

And then, of course, because we are old, many of our friends are old also.  So, seeing as how we are now in our 80’s, so are our friends.  And that’s really when folks begin to leave.

But then we have this term we always use—“Leave”. Sometimes we say that folks have “passed on”, or they have “departed”.  And then many folks engage in the fantasy whereby they envision the departed as sitting up above us, on a cloud somewhere watching us.

In short, they imagine that Life continues, but in a different form.  They can observe us, but they are no longer able to interact with us. But does everyone believe that Life After Tale?  Well, No. I, for one, have a different view of what happens “After”.  And what is that view?

Well, I imagine that we suddenly lose awareness and we do not even realize we are dead, because we no longer realize anything.  That is, our mind stops functioning altogether. It isn’t that it stops being capable of yelling at other people. No, it stops being capable of seeing/knowing/sensing. It goes blank, AND, it remains blank.  Further, it (the mind) does not suddenly allow us to see other dead folks, or to watch our trials and tribulations down here on Earth. Nope. We no longer sense anything.

Now, I suppose that scenario is both a plus and a minus. The plus side is that, we are not going to Hell, because there is no Hell. But on the minus side, we are not going to Heaven for the same reason. There is no Heaven.  And that’s the part that keeps my attention. I can’t decide whether that’s a good thing, or a bad thing.  We will simply shut down . . . Forever. We will never become born again. We will never be aware again. But then we won’t even know we are “not aware”.  To be honest, I have never really understood that Hindu reincarnation thing about being “born again”.  If you have no memory of your prior life, you also have no awareness. How is that different from what I imagine?

I realize that our population of “Believers”—generally churchgoers of any persuasion—will take serious exception to what I think and believe. And surely they are entitled to that viewpoint, since, to be fair, I have no more actual data than they do. Again, to my knowledge, no one has come back from Death.  Now, some folks get brought back to Life after they have technically died, i.e., their heart stopped beating and they seemed technically dead. Then through CPR or some other shock, they regain Life. I think that doesn’t count for much, since most have no cloud-like memories. They stop breathing, everything goes blank, then they return to breathing and Life again.  But none, to my limited knowledge, have anything to contribute to the debate about what happens after we croak.

And so, when I am told of a friend who “passes on”, or I read something, I feel a bit of a sadness, or even a shock. And it adds to my own awareness of the nearness of that event to me.  But I still do not know what to do with those feelings. I can prepare for the folks who I will leave behind, e.g., that Will thing. And I can even write notes (no this is not such a note) But I can’t do much else.

What I can do, more importantly, is to try to spread some more love and some more good feelings. I can try to make people around me happy.  Smile Richard. Make believe you’re on TV. Quit Hating things and people, even Trump MAGAHeads. They’re idiots, yes. But they don’t even know they’re idiots, and that is important to them.

So, maybe I should apologize for writing my tale here.  

And, when it’s time, Have another glass of some nice wine, look at your Love One and Say, To Us.

World War End

I have been alive a long time by almost any count. I still remember the beginning of that first war I remember. No, not World War I. That was my granfolks war.  Yeah, they watched it, although to my knowledge, none of them were ever engaged within it.  No, it was World War II, beginning with that Pearl Harbor thing, you know, when our enemies dropped all those bombs all over our bases in Hawaii. Yeah, I remember that one.

And then we entered what became World War III, the war without endings.  Yeah, it began in 1950, soon after WW II ended. Koreans started shooting at one another and, of course, we had to take Sides. Then, vaguely after that seemed to want to end, The Vietnamese began shooting at one another, and, again, of course we had to take sides. And that one went on for years. But then, relatively unnoticed it would seem, people had been shooting at one another in that place called The Middle East, for years. And that has never really stopped. As soon as one group stops shooting there is a waiting line for the next group to begin shooting.  Yeah, turns out that Humans just really like killing one another. Think on that six-year old who went to school recently and just shot his teacher. Yeah, humans learn really early. Apparently, the Bible tells us that “Thou Shalt Kill” in any way we can.

And so, folks have been shooting up the planet almost ever since I came into being in 1934.

And now, we are beginning to notice, when we turn our attention away from people killing people that is, that we collectively have introduced what we might call the War that ends all Wars – Global Climate Change. Only, now it is US against The World. Yeah, we are now engaged in a war being waged by our planet, because we have been too stupid to take action to prevent it.  Apparently, at least 70 years ago, our scientists have been telling us that, unless we reduce our carbon emissions, our global climate will change and may well begin killing us all.  But they were predicting potential disaster many years in our future, and, whenever we do that, humans say, “yeah sure, but just not now”. And, so, predictably, we have been ignoring their advice to reduce carbon emissions.

So, now we are approaching that 2-degree temperature rise that predicts a cataclysmic climate change. Global warming will give rise to more extremes in all kinds of weather—droughts, catastrophic rainstorms, ice-free arctic zones, giving us even more wildass weather.  They are now coming up with new terms—Bomb Cyclones, atmospheric rivers. And many of the folks who produce our food are beginning to experience the worst of their predictions. California has been hit by both serious droughts leading to wildfires, followed by rainstorms leaving behind rivers overflowing everywhere.

And we no longer just get rainstorms—you know, those cloudy days when rain falls for a few hours, leaving behind an inch of water. No, now, it rains for a few hours and leaves behind 3-5 inches of water, which floods many areas, accompanied by wildass winds. Yeah, much of our weather now seems intent on destruction.  

Now you might imagine that all this catastrophic weather might provoke our industrial and our government leaders to sit down and prescribe some serious changes to prevent even more destruction. But instead, we have industrial leaders mounting serious charade campaigns to misinform the public. And then, just to follow suit, the America people voted to elect even more republicans into office. How does that change things? Well, republicans are now opposed to government. Yeah, folks elect republicans explicitly so that our government will cease functioning.  And that Kevin McCarthy charade just illustrated the point beautifully.  Yeah, Kevin basically gave away the candy store in order to head up the group that hates government. So what you say? Well, what that means is that, while our industrial leaders continue lying to us, in order that they can continue doing nothing, now our government will be too dysfunctional to do anything either. And so, global climate change will continue unhindered, and even accelerated by humans.  Yeah, aren’t we proud folks? And I was just reading about Norway which is achieving zero carbon emissions, while we piss away any chance of emulating their responsible behavior.

And so, our war with ourselves continues unabated. Aren’t we proud? But, just remember, there is no bogeyman enemy in this war, folks. We are our own enemies. And that is why this is perhaps our last war. So play on. It may not be long.