Dream speak

During last night's dreams the words "it would have been better for him never to have been born than to have seen these days" played over and over in my mind. This concept sounds vaguely familiar. I have the distinct sensation that it plays a large role in the Bible, Shakespeare, Greek tragedy, Tolkien and probably a zillion others; all of these things having figured heavily into my reading at some point or another.

Isn't it a tragic statement though? It's a monumentally weighty thought to be so deep in despair that illimitable good memories are not enough to overcome the bad of this very moment. I've been there. Megan has been there. Probably most people have been there at some point. Some of the people I've known never got past that moment. But most have. If I think about that for a moment it blows me away.

But what about the people we know who didn't have the strength to live or die their way out of the quagmire of hopelessness? For some, I believe, it is a feat of superhuman strength to overcome anguish by owning death. For many, they perhaps felt they'd already been sentenced to death. I'm thinking not only of terminally ill patients who walk the road of assisted suicide, but of schizophrenics or others who are aware of their disease, who have struggled mightily against an unbreakable wall, who have picked themselves up from the fall to once again scale insurmountable odds. In that moment when the struggle becomes clear in its infinity, isn't it being realistic to consider that self-determination includes many forms of victory? I don't know. I'm considering the options as I write.

For me, suicide is not the unforgivable sin; but, then again, I do not believe God is puppeteering each of my moments. I'm reminded of the theme song from M*A*S*H: suicide is painless, it brings on many changes; and I can take or leave it if I please. Doesn't that suggest empowerment?

It occurs to me that I should probably mention two things. One, I'm not depressed I'm just running with a strange dream. And, two, I know that suicide is a terrible thing for a family to go through and I hope this conversation is not disrespectful to that pain.

But back to the people who don't feel they can live or die their way out of their position. What about them? It seems to me that the sentence is a life of sadness and despair, angry and suspicious of the world. I guess I'm really thinking of my mother, who I admit I do not have the strength to face. She's a paranoid schizophrenic who tumbles through life like so much laundry in the dryer, bouncing from one point to another with no control over whither or when. This is how I think of her, though I confess she may be fundamentally in control with medication or therapy and I would not know it. But when I think of her, I think of a person damned to unhappiness and bitterness, with no options for self-actualization, lost in the interminable wash of people whose existence leaves little mark on the world. But she left her children, who are leaving their children. I have said before that I'd rather not have been born than deal with growing up in our house. Each time I've said that I've meant it. But there's an amazing juxtaposition of relationship for me to look back up the road and see my mother, then turn down the road and see my children and all that they could be and know that those separate worlds are intimately connected--by me. I see fear that the road will circle, but hope that it continues upward.

For each time that you've made someone laugh, or feel anything at all it is better that you were born. For each time your children brought the world joy in its smallest corner it is better that you were born. For each moment that you stitch into the tapestry of humanity it is better that you were born. Even in the darkest of days, better.

I weep under the weight of humanity that has gone before

I was looking through some of my friend Peter's photos. He's on a service mission in the Middle East. As I looked through his photos of Lebanon, I was moved and overwhelmed at the vastness of day to day emotions that have lived on this earth through the millenia. Here were only a few photos of one small corner of earth where for thousands of years people have worried, feared, wept, loved, smiled, laughed, slept, had sex, starved, wanted, endured, created, sang, and died. The size of each of those things in my life, multiplied by untold millions, literally leaves me short of breath. Here are a couple of Peter's photos, shared without permission, but with a request for his forgiveness.