I really don’t want to die. I have certainly had my low points and the really bad stuff is yet to come, but I have enjoyed these 27 years so much that I get filled with an overwhelming sense of dread when I think about the End. This usually happens at night when I can’t sleep and the void of darkness reminds me that the real Void is waiting for me. Nothingness, oblivion, whatever you want to call it­­—in less than 100 short years, every one of us is going to be dead. Sooner than that for most, much sooner for some of our loved ones. I try not to let the fear overwhelm me. After all, 30 years ago I didn’t exist and it wasn’t so bad. I missed all the cool history, though. The dinosaurs ruled for 250 million years while I was not present. Man marched out of Africa, across the unexplored ranges of Asia and Europe, traversed the Arctic bridge and began slaughtering the giant mammals of the Western Hemisphere all while I was a dispersion of atoms without soul or conscience. The Egyptian Empire, the Dynasties of China, the Samurai of Japan, and Knights of England, they all all reached death before I found life. Even still, I miss them. I like reading about those eras, wishing I could somehow travel back in time. While I should take comfort that great people have perished before me, I dread that the future will go on without me. I cannot read the history books of 2300 A.D. I cannot see the discoveries of fututre explorers, or the horrible atrocities that may fall on my fellows. When I can’t sleep, these thoughts nearly consume me.
Humanity has a long tradition of trying to overcome such morbidity. Religion in its myriad forms may be defined as the social construct devoted to keeping people from fearing death. I gave up my last shred of religion when I had the epiphany that truth is unswayed by popular opinion. While it may comfort the legions of modern religions to spread their ethos and convince detractors, it is ultimately pointless. What else drives the desperate proselytizing of Evangelicals if not the barely contained fear that they are wrong. It is much easier to ignore the gnawing of doubt or the sharp blade of reason if all who give creedence to such reason and doubt are converted. But what is the real point? The universe doesn’t care if you think that you are going to live forever. There will be no magical loss or generation of mass and energy when they bury any of us. Heaven will not rise because I wish it.
So I love life. It is all I have. I love the experience, even the pain. What I most hate, what I cringe from, is religion that tries to force oblivion on me before my due time. While religion tries to give hope for an unattainable eternity, what it really does is poison the short span we have. When life is all I own, I cannot help but hate the enemies of life. With its ascetic fervor and denial of the senses; of pleasure, exploration, fear, doubt, desire, and rage, religion tries to promise an orgy after death. If you give up the fullness of life, the real party starts later. But there will be no party for any of use when the Nightwatchman comes. I wasn’t alive before I was born, and I won’t be alive after I am dead. Like all life—animals, plants, microbes—I am a highly organized collection of atoms, and I am damn lucky. But my time is ending; I am special, just not that special.
