January 14, 2009
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I'm often surprised at what provokes an emotional response from me.
I watched Big Fish last night and I just started crying uncontrollably. The movie is amazing, but that's not what I was crying about this time. Instead, the man who plays the storytelling father looked a lot like my grandfather who died around this time a couple years ago. When I was little I remember sternly requesting that were my grandfather to die, he return to me as a ghost and tell me what death was like. I also remember him promising to do so. Of course, he died and he didn't come back. I just started thinking about that and how a reasonable understanding of science reduces one's ability to believe unconditionally that there is an afterlife. Then I started thinking about how no matter what I do, eventually my cells will reach their limit of replication and replenishment and my body will begin to deteriorate and I will die. Sometimes I wish I wasn't intelligent. I've come to believe strongly that ignorance is indeed bliss. I remember how magical the world seemed before I knew what really made it rain or why eyes can see or how an electrical button works. Why was I fated to realize that heaven is just a dream created by frightened ignorant people? Why can't I just blindly accept a religion, any religion, and be satisfied that my consciousness will go somewhere after my body has rotted and withered into the ground? People who have that kind of faith are so lucky, especially if they really believe it all. Then I just started crying uncontrollably nearing the end of Big Fish, which I will admit I normally cry about but not that hard.
Why do people have to die? Death is the worst thing I can imagine. Even being paralyzed from the neck down leaves you with your mind alive and well. I don't want to die. Life is too good, even at it's worst. Maybe, before I die, someone will come up with a cure for death, a cure for the deterioration of DNA and cell growth. But if that was the case, wouldn't we be prohibited from producing children? Maybe that would be worse, living forever but being incapable of passing your genetic material on to anyone else.
I'm going to stop thinking right now and play World of Warcraft. I'm depressing myself.
Comments (4)
haha i saw your username on my footprints thing.
is world of warcraft fun? (:
Death scares me a lot too. I was raised religious enough that I WANT to believe there's an afterlife, but I know enough about science that I find it basically impossible. But I have come to accept that it is inevitable...and as Isaac Asimov once said, "Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
@captainxbeefhart -
Yeah, I like it. In general it is a good stress reliever. I definitely can't play it for extended periods of time, though, because it gets tiresome.
@SnappletheHutt -
I like that quote and normally I'm fine with telling myself that I will produce children and my death will be a natural thing, but sometimes the emotion just wells up and I freak out a little.
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