God Problems
By: Alice Thompson
Sometimes you start to type and that is when you begin to realize there is nothing worth saying. Those were the thoughts coming out of my mouth this morning as I began to write. I have very little to say, but I really need to say something. I feel the need to be heard, and I am not sure exactly why. What I think I need is validation, a realization by others that confirms both my existence and importance as a being. That is why I submit both in person and writing.
As I look out on the day I guess I get to choose what I see. Am I valued? Does that matter? If you don’t value me should I care, or pretend I don’t? And if you do value me will I have a hard time accepting the compliment, feeling awkward to have been noticed? Either way, this is the type of narcissism that defines this core. Strange as it may be I need to have it in order to protect me from myself. Why that is I am not really sure. On days like this, if I want I can see the drudgery. I would rather see the beauty, perfect bliss, and amazing splendor. Come on Alice, shouldn’t I have some god damn gratitude?
There is Love, Children, Food, and Work. I have time to Study, functional Brain, able Body – and then the brakes lock up and I slide into the back end of my Spirit? Spirit. That is the problem, my difficulty, this tricky situation I find myself in. Everything else lies within that one word. We either have it or don’t, and on any given day I am occasioned by the lack of it.
My god problem, a tough beast to address. Certainly, I would love nothing more than to believe in some everlasting purpose, a being, a creature, an energy that values my story as a human. I want something to root on for me to be and do better, but I can’t really allow myself to talk aloud about that. Praying and talking to the imaginary seems silly. Isn’t that just me wishing, creating something out of nothing? Yet whenever life is hard and help is needed, even I too have felt comfort therein. What does that say about me, it, the whole meaning of life thing? I don’t feel too worried about where I am going now that I am older, not so much anymore. What I want to know is why this is even happening in the first place. No, not the biological question, Darwin made sense of that, but why it cosmically began.
If you attempt to teach me on this, to educate and proclaim a purpose, I will try to listen, I promise. It is something I enjoy doing, but we will likely run into a problem while doing so. Ego, self, small minded, protective to a fault. For me, knowing that I am wrong is not a problem. I know I am wrong most of the time, but upon being corrected or confronted with an opinion of certitude I ball up. My defense is raised, and I begin to build an army of prose and evidence to suggest that I am right. That is my step one. Subsequent steps two and three tend to show me another way, with an evidence that breathes more truth, whether right or wrong. That is the step wise process; 1) Fight, 2) See, and then 3) Accept, regardless of if it is correct, just to simplify and stop the repeating question, repeating question, repeating question…
If you feel tired of being confused, just say it. Why the hell are we here? I am serious about this. While some just accept there is no purpose, and others see it clearly, why am I cast to the middle and landed into the ongoing purgatory of daily awareness and being. It’s a mystery to me that somehow after many decades of self-evaluation I am still no closer than before. I was closer at birth to knowing, and hence forward have seemed to exponentially decay on this shortly contrived journey of the spirit and mind. Don’t tell me you have the answer. No human can. I have heard the anthropological reasoning so many times, from so many people. I have gone both the path of the external and internal, and they all fall short. It is troubling to me that there is no obvious solution. Can’t it just be scientific and simplified? I want to be an orbit, a circle, a simple equation, but instead seem to be a complex reaction with so many variables as to the point of insanity. I must admit though that it is fun to play the game, and for this old lady the band keeps playing on.
