[Miscellany]

My crisis of faith wasn't a crisis at all.  There is no crisis when truth is uncovered.  It just is.  I think truth comes into your world and that's the end of it.  Regardless of whether your truth be spiritual or scientific; it still brings about an enlightenment.  Your truth is enlightening to you.  I am philosophical enough to know that there is my truth, your truth and *the* truth. However *the* truth isn't ever going to matter anywhere but in the court of law. Even then what point is *the* truth when there is no way of ever proving it either way?  Does it even exist anywhere but in one's own heart?  That's hardly scientific but perhaps empirical knowledge is the key to understanding, here.

I used to believe in God but now I do not.  I used to believe that when humans die they stay with us as spirit.  That notion has helped me get through a lot.  It's helped me get through my father's death.  It helped me make sense of a world turned upside down to still feel him there with me - to talk to him when there was no one else to talk to and to feel comforted by the notion that someone still had my back, even if they weren't human at all.  It helped me to think (know!) that there was life after death, even if I didn't believe in God... or heaven or even if I didn't follow a dogmatic approach to things...and even if I was morally and intellectually opposed to anything religious.  It didn't matter to me that it was confusing that God was dead but my dad had somehow lived on.  My truth didn't have to make sense.  The truth doesn't have to make sense for it to be real.  Those kinds of details really don't matter when you are grieving.  They really don't matter even if you aren't grieving to be completely honest.  Don't judge until you have been there at age 16.

I'm not quite sure how truth came in or how I got enlightened but however it happened, it happened and here I am; embracing truth.. as I have done before, albeit from a different vantage point.  I don't know if it is *the* truth, but it's enough.  I can't say it's a *better* place to be but whether the truth of my past was truer than the truth that exists now is irrelevant.  In the end what it presently true is essentially more true that what was true before just because it's true now, to me.  Right?

So as I approach the 20th anniversary of the death of an important man, that wasn't really all that important to anyone else but me and the few people who loved him, I'm reflecting a lot on humans and death and decay.  I'm reflecting on the truth of humankind. I'm reflecting on how one little human being can explode all over the place just by disappearing and how the domino effect of that is greater than anyone can ever understand and how unimportant that is at the same time to anyone else and anything else going on in the world.

I'm looking at the truth and the truth is that there is absolutely nothing more than what your eyes see now.  There is carbon and worms and stardust.  And if you happen to die and don't exist anymore then did you ever?  I mean you were here, there's the photo that proves it, there's the headstone and there's the memory of you.  All these things fade however - even the headstone.  Things that humans build when they are alive decay unbelievably quickly when you take away the human element from them.  Buildings deteriorate, friendships are lost, love is gone and there is nothing left once you take the human bit away.

And what of that exactly? Sure there are the trinkets left behind; cufflinks or faded smiling photographs or that one little gift left in the form of interlocking silver hearts I wear sometimes as a pendant. These are the tributes one has of a person and we wear them and look at them to remind us or to grip on to because the essence of the real them does not exist anymore. They are a tribute but what are we tributing exactly?  Ghosts don't exist, spirits don't inhabit, memories fade and love is lost.  All these tangible and intangible things that we hold on to so tightly eventually fade as if they never existed in the first place and after all is said and done and the dust has settled again and the last paper decays and the memory dies with the last person well what of that existence?  It ceases to exist completely like it never did. What is left?  I suppose there is the empty seashell; the meaningless chaos of tragedy and near-misses.  There's that.

And what to make of 20 years that has gotten a lot harder in the last year, harder than it ever has been before?  What do I make of you now, Dad?  Did you ever exist and does it matter?  Is the sum of you encapsulated in the trinkets left behind when you left? Is it the nostalgia of you, the not-quite memories of something that is basically an untruth that has been manipulated by time and my memories of the way you might have been.  And when that smashed up memory of you dies or fades then do you die again, or is that your one true death?   What is the sum of 20 years?  Is it just time?  Is it just emotion?  What are you?  Where are you?  Who are you?  ...Who am I?

How can I miss the ghost of somebody that doesn't exist anymore so, so much?

But I do, I really do miss you.  I miss almost everything about you and that's the honest truth.

Labels: truth, truth time

posted by M at 10:53 pm 4 comments