This essay was written by my youngest brother Todd
as a Facebook NoteIf this is it...
Stay with me.
Take a moment to breathe that in for a moment. What if there is no life beyond life? What if all life is simply survival of the fittest? We are born, live in any way we see fit and we die and no longer exist except we turn to soil and feed for worms? What if that is it? Don't just push this away as a God vs. No God argument. Step in to life and death and a conversation about more...
I have been thinking about it for awhile for several reasons, but I will share one.
First, foremost, I learned recently of a friend who's wife died several months ago. I felt bad that I had not seen any post for months as he has been sharing his very raw journey as life as a single dad. I went back in his FB posts to find out more.(is that FB stalking?) I went back several months to when the posts rolled in from his close friends about their condolences. What really got me thinking was seeing the post a day or two before. It read something to the effect "I'm packing up work for the week and excited to put our son down early and watch a movie with my lovely wife." Life one moment and life gone in the next. I stared at that post and was reminded that no one knows the hour of their death. It comes and takes us all away. I thought for awhile, not too long, about what if this had happened to me. What if one day I was posting and the next people were sending me their condolences. What if I lost one of my wife or a daughter?
I spent time dwelling on the following question:
What if there was nothing after this life?
My conclusion:
Life would be a fricken rip off! It would be bullshit! Screw this place! It only took a minute to realize that nature would only be a cruel joke. That I am just blip in time and so was my marriage, child, my life. A blip and all I got out of it was 12 years with my wife, or all I got was 6 years with my daughter. Enough time to love something beyond understanding only for it to just pass to dust? If this is it, we got screwed by nature. If this is it? There is no hope. Sit on that for awhile.
If dust is all we become what is worth putting our hope in? More money, a few more toys to play with, an 117 year life? Hope in a really good beer? An excellent pasta dish? To travel to all 50 states? I hope I can make it to see the MN Twins play in Fenway Park? Wow, that is something to live for...
But aren't there things to aspire too? Live a good a life, leaving the world a better place than you found it? Good for you. In less than 250 years the chances that your blip has any meaning is not high and in reality your blip will only be in a history lesson. Why, because the past is somewhat meaningless because nature doesn't care(why should we? Problem is we do care down to the very depths of our being and what does that say? Certainly does not point us to the way of nature). All nature is doing is evolving, it will continue to move forward. If it does not it will die. Lovely picture isn't it?
Here is the part you won't expect. Let's not talk about faith because it is too much of a roadblock, just keep your thoughts in the realm of "Hope".
Too choose to accept that we are just a blip in the ride of evolution is a choice that I personally cannot accept.
I choose to believe in "HOPE". To not believe in hope is to accept an awful fate. I want a life after this because when the day comes and my heart is ripped out by a loss of magnitude of someone I love so deeply like my wife or children.(or their life is ripped to shreds because of my death). I choose hope. I choose to hope that one day I would see them again.
You can keep your life as dust because I am going to believe big!To my children and all those I love, but mostly this is for my children.
Choose HOPE! And I will see you again.
-Daddy
