I have voices, in my head, they are talking, known only by letter, about a life I might once have had. I don't want them to stop. Not until they show me the way.
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My Dear Marie:
First and foremost I want you to know and to remember that it was never you. The anger, frustration, the external displays of dissatisfaction. They were never about you, not in their essence.
Sure, I've felt all of those things towards you at some point. I've been frustrated by what you haven't done. I've been angry at what you have done. At times. Perhaps often. Too often.
And, like we read as young parents (Rabbi Telushkin I believe in "Words the Hurt; Words that Heal"), it is the negative things we remember.
It takes 1,000 compliments to undo one solitary, devastating criticism.
It matters little that we are adults, not children. We feel the pain. We embrace the pain. We love the pain.
We remember the pain.
But pain, I never wanted to cause you. It may be hard to believe, but it's true. I've gladly acknowledged your positive influence on my life. I wouldn't have one had you not relented and stayed with me.
I'd have been gone long ago. I had already given up. I saw no purpose in continuing.
There is no meaning, you know. That's what most people seek. Meaning.
It does not exist.
I believe you know that.
We hang on to God, whatever name or form we choose to represent our idealized image of "God" is irrelevant. We create God in order to have "meaning".
The God-less of our world seek "purpose". "Purpose" is very different, however.
Meaning gor thr religious is God, eternity, Heaven...be good and you'll live forever with God. That way, by living well and doing good things for others, your life has meaning.
Purpose is living well and doing well for others despite knowing that once you die you're dead - no God. No Heaven. No forever.
For those that believe in purpose believe your life can have a kind of meaning by leaving the world - our tiny, mortal planet in this infinite and not understandable universe - intact and perhaps better than we found it, better for future generations of our species.
Wanting, needing, identifying with a desire to leave the planet better off is a martyr-ish purpose and one that fulfills the Godless need for meaning.
But why would anyone care about future grnerations dozens of decades in the future?
Why not? I guess.
It doesn't really matter. Really.
Better or worse, once we're dead (so say the God-less) we won't even know if we succeeded or not. We won't know if anyone remembers us, remembers or thanks us for our efforts, or whether they might curse the day we were born and all if the things we did during our time on earth.
Don't know. Don't matter.
In fact, right after the God-less die, anything could happen on or to us and our planet, including the end of everything, and they wouldn't know if it did.
And their efforts, for better or worse, would have no more or less purposeful and certainly not full of any meaning.
In fact, estimates vary, but scientists unanimously predict that some billions of years from know the universe will end. That's quite a long time which leaves plenty of room for error. But I've got to agree, God or no God, that eventually it will all be gone.
But I could be wrong.
But if and when it does end, in the God-less version of existence anyway, there will have been no meaning nor any purpose.
What once was, everything, no longer will be. There will be no recorded history. There will be no one to remember. It will simply be gone.
All of it.
Everything.
Everyone.
Even God; in a God-less universe.
In the God-full universe, when we get to the end, whatever form of humanity that exists will find its religion real quickly, if it's been lost, especially if God is real. And then, all of our descendants will, ideally, ascend into Heaven, to live on for eternity with God, whatever God proves to be.
And then what?
And so what?
What about now?
Well, that is the point.
I don't know if there is a God. But I'm pretty sure that, if there is one, the versions of God and the religions we've built around the many images of God over countless millennia to worship these various Gods are all wrong.
The story line is in the historical record, for God's sake, literally and it's easy to follow.
I know I am unusual. I know I am difficult to live with. I know you don't know what to make of me much of the time.
I want you to know, no matter what, that I want you to be happy.
I dream of an eternity with you.
I wish for God to take us away, to live in happiness and love forever.
You've granted me a kind of heaven on earth already.
You, the children...
But I am plagued by an inability to accept that which most of us earth-bound humans accept. I can't do what others do, accept things "as is" mostly by consciously fooling themselves by accepting and believing the myths and fables of God on Earth.
I don't know what to believe in, but I will go to my grave seeking the answers.
And along the way, every day, for better or worse, whether I succeed or not at any of it, if I have another tomorrow, I will try to make it a better one for you than the one I was able to provide for you today.
For me, for us, forever began near two decades ago. There is a lot more forever for us to share. If we choose.
