I Had A Dream
With all the reading we have to do about Death, the God(s), and Fate in Philosophy I think I’m starting to have nightmares. Well, either that, or Kim’s latest post and last nights pineapple pizza.
The odd thing is, that I hardly ever remember my dreams. Last night’s must have been a doozy.
When we’re kids we almost never think about dying. Maybe that’s because we really don’t have a concept of not waking up tomorrow. We can see a hundred years of life yet to live so what’s to worry about? As we get older, and our string of life gets past halfway, I guess it’s natural to think about it once in a while. This is the first time I actually can remember dreaming about it though. (Friggin Socrates, Aristotle, Epicurus, Kim, all of ya’ll can kiss my butt, because I ain’t goin anytime soon!)
The funny thing was, that in my dream I was ok with it. I wasn’t kickin and screamin, and yellin that somebody had made a mistake. Well, other than “Shit, now I’ll never get that damned degree!”
There was no bright light, no deep rolling voice, just a dim little flame that was getting dimmer all the time. Damned if I know how I knew I was dying, I just did. So while I was waiting for the little flame to go out, I was wondering what would happen now. I thought about all the stuff I had done in my life that was bad and just figured things were gonna get pretty hot pretty soon. Then I thought about the good things I had done in my life (and yes, there have been two or three) and started to wonder if maybe there was a half-way house that maybe was a little uncomfortable, but not like roasting or anything.
I finally came to the conclusion that whatever happened it was too damned late to worry about it. I could have spent my whole life in a damned monastery somewhere only to find out that God wanted us to live out in the open. I could have spent my life being a politician and found out that Hell is run by Joe Stalin or Hitler. Since I didn’t do either of those things I figured my chances were at least 50 – 50 of either getting a break, or it just being a matter of my little flame going out and my body becoming compost. Compost wouldn’t be too bad, I might even be a big tree some day.
My point was though, that I was ok with dying, if that’s what happened. I don’t intend on rushing it any by walking in front of a car, or teasing sharks, but I figure that when the time comes either the Big Guy will make me teach politicians how to get along for a few thousand years (now that’s a nightmare), or my composite atoms will eventually be given back to the earth where they came from… and either is ok by me.