Dear reader,
Do you ever think about death? I do. All the time. I think about how I'll die and what I want to happen with my corpse. I think about if I'll be able to hang around a bit after death or if I have to move on. I wonder what I'll see. Other dead people? Creatures? Sparks of light and energy? I wonder if my cat will be able to see me. Will I be another thing she stares at and follows around a room, freaking everyone out?
And the people. Who will outlive me? Which friends? My spouse? My brother, my mother? Will my father outlive me even with his excessive drinking and smoking? Will he grieve for me and all the lost time, or will he be as indifferent as ever? Or will he go to his grave, never once thinking that he outlived his child?
And what happens after all of that? Reincarnation, becoming one with some cosmic force, paradise, punishment, or a vast nothingness - ceasing to exist and having no consciousness?
Paradise isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I have a personal saying: "Eine Geschichte ohne Konflikt hat keine Bedeutung. Ein Leben ohne Kampf hat keinen Zweck." Which, translated for those of you that don't speak German, means "A story without conflict has no meaning. A life without struggle has no purpose." If everything was perfect, it would be boring. Think of it in terms of a movie. Who wants to sit and watch someone succeed in everything, have a comfortable job, and go about their daily lives in monotony with not one bit of conflict? Life is the same way. Sure, it sucks when you get turned down for a promotion or get your heart broken. It's awful when you break a limb or have your car break down. But for all the bad, there is good - and it makes the good that much better. You appreciate it more because you worked for it, you suffered for it, you earned every bit of the goodness through everything you endured.
That's why I have a problem with the notion of Heaven, a paradise where nothing bad happens and we all live happily ever after. I don't want that. That's miserable! Who wants to live a perfect and boring (semblance of a) life for all eternity? Where's the struggle, the motivation? What is there to fight for? Where's the purpose? If you take away struggle and conflict, you have nothing. It's what drives humans: the idea of something better. And you can't get better than perfect.
Paradise is already lost, Milton.
John Milton - author of one of my favorite works, Paradise Lost - believed that you can't have good without evil. And it's true. If evil ceased to exist and you never knew it, how would you know what was good? If you never knew sorrow, how could you know happiness? One cannot exist without the other because they are known only by comparison. Think about it this way, if you were always sick and bedridden, kept company by those who were ailing as well, you'd never know what it was like to be healthy. That would be your "normal" and that's all you would ever know. Healthy wouldn't exist for you.
By that token, a paradise with no pain and suffering, with no burdens or obstacles, with no struggle and nothing to overcome - essentially stripped of those human elements - is no paradise at all.
To live is to suffer.
It sounds bitter and, perhaps, melodramatic but it's true. To suffer is the way of man. It's the human element. We suffer, we struggle, and we overcome or let it consume us. Either way, our suffering - much more than our success - shapes us as people. We are a block of marble. When something impacts us in a negative way, it strikes the marble, removing chunks. It pulls our shape out, our character. It carves out who we are. The storms - the wind and water - smooth out the edges and reveal our form. And the joy? The joy ads the final touches, the moment of triumph, the light shining out from the center of the marble to make it all worth it. But without the suffering, without the adversity, we'd still just be a big block of marble with no meaning, no purpose, and no definition.
I'm not saying our mistakes and the like define us, but it helps us change and become something more. Think of it in this context: which will likely have a bigger impact - eating an ice cream cone, or having a bully push you down and take it from you? Obviously the bully. Maybe you'll fight back. Maybe you'll reason with him. Maybe you'll become a bully yourself. Or perhaps think that it's better he took yours instead of someone else's, and that will set you on the path to be a protector of others.
But the point is that moment will impact you and shape you and give you much more than Suzy Paradise will get sitting on the bench and enjoying her fudge pop.
- An INFJ
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