Tag Archives: Death

Letters to God – Part 20: On Death and Life

death_quote_5

Today someone died.

That should not surprise us, right God? There are billions of people in the world, millions in my country. Millions of people die every day. Nonetheless, death is something that still bothers us. We fear death. We hate death. But why?

The other day I took some time to think about this. Why don’t we live forever? How would the world look if we never died? The first image that came to my mind is that we would all be sitting in the beach, drinking coconut water and eating fish we took from the sea. All urgent things in life would disappear, because there would always be tomorrow.

But at the same time, this would create great stagnation of the human race. Why? Because if we had infinite time to do things, we would also take infinite time to do them. That is how we are. I don’t meant there would be no inventions, but the process would be much, much slower. I can imagine the typical conversation between two inventors/entrepreneurs in this world: “Jill: Bad news Joe – the test we did today for the itch-scratchy machine failed again. Joe: Bugger. Well, we’ll try again later. No rush, it’s not like we are going to die tomorrow or something like that”.

For some strange inner reason, we all want to change the world. We have a limited number of years, days, hours… And one day, hopefully without previous notice, we die. So we can’t wait for tomorrow, because who knows what will happen tomorrow. We must do things now.

My greatest fear is not death, God. Everything ends when we die. I fear for the living, because these are the ones who suffer when we go. I fear pain. I fear suffering. I fear being lonely.

But I don’t fear death. Because death is what makes me alive.

Letters to God – Part 4: Punishment

source: http://wobble-house.blogspot.co.il/2012/03/concept-of-god.html

Last week I started a new ritual in my daily: I come early from work (before sunset) and walk around the block with my son, while he has a patch on his good eye. Last week we found out (once again by chance) that he lost almost all of his sight in one eye :-(, so I want to do a more daily follow-up on this, and also use this time to talk to him and understand how he feels.

Yesterday was tough. In the middle of the walk, while talking about an eye exam he was doing today (and after doing it once, hates it), he asked one question: Why was I punished with this? Why did God punish me?

Tough one, ah?

First I had to stop myself from crying. After I managed this, I tried to explain to him that he was not being punished. That we simply don’t understand what God wants from us and that if he gave him what he did, it must be for a purpose, but we are simply too dumb and simple to understand this.

The conversation went “uphill” from that point, and we talked about all of the bad things that happen in the world (well, not all but many), and how, if I was to make the world, people would never get sick and would never die. He thought this would be boring, having all of the time the same people around, doing the same jobs. So we settled on having no sickness and when people got bored, they would simply go to sleep forever. Deep thoughts for a seven-year old kid.

So God, tell me. Just between you and me. Are you punishing us or is this really the way you meant the world to be?