At Sixty, I Am Still Waiting For An Explanation

 

 

 

I am sixty years old and I still have no idea what is this life that I, we, have to live.

Is it a miracle or a curse?

I remember when I was pregnant with my daughter I had an ultrasound, the first one. What I saw then on the machine’s monitor – a cluster of cells, beating to their own rhythm and the technician telling me “Look, it has a heartbeat” – it looked like a miracle to me.

When I look at my husband, at all the other patients sitting quietly in hospital rooms, when I see him, them, suffering, it looks like a curse to me.

Why are we born if from the first second we breathe in air we are headed towards death, towards nothingness?

Why exist at all if the sole purpose of our existence is non-existence?

And don’t tell me all that bullshit about journeys and roads and experience and ascension.

Because it is not real.

Because it is not it.

We live and work, we build and create and heal and, in the end, nothing comes out of it.

Life is struggle and pain and suffering and for what? To what end? Heaven? I don’t think so.

I’ve seen so much during my existence on this Earth that I cannot be fooled anymore.

The religious people say that life is simply a transition to…to where? Why?

If all this would be that simple.

I once asked my uncle, who was a priest, about life, God, Heaven, Hell, Universe, us. He shoved me a walnut and said;” Do you see this walnut? This is your mind. And God is so huge that your mind cannot contain Him, cannot comprehend.”

Yes, he was a clever man, my uncle. But I wasn’t convinced.

I wanted to know why I had to live this daily battle. What is to learn? What is to understand? Do we, as human beings contribute with our so-called lives to something bigger, something important?  I would like to think so, to imagine myself as a part of something significant.

But I am skeptical. I don’t know anymore. I mean, I want to believe because otherwise it is really depressing to think that all this will simply end some day and we still won’t understand why.

The truth is, we don’t know anything. We never did. None of us. We just fool ourselves that we do, that we are on this mission to unfold the meaning of life. Because, otherwise, why live?

We are small and so not important and we try to occupy our existence with petty, despicable actions in the name of…What? The immortality of the soul? Perhaps. But do we really have souls or are we simply blood and flesh machines?

I don’t know. I don’t know anything and it is late and I am tired.

I watch the numbers on the clock and I feel time slipping through my fingers.