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Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken: A Thought On One Common Response To Suffering

"If I'm gonna go, let me go. I don't want to suffer." Honestly, the people who say this have no idea what they are talking about. This is spoken by a fearful person, who hasn't actually lived. I gotta be honest. I wasn't close to death, really, but I know about this suffering people are afraid of. The death of the body is a fearful thing, though the death of the soul (that is, the second death) is worse. When you realize that you could die, there is a profound joy in the fact of not having died yet.

I'm a Christian of course, but aside from thoughts about the eternal human soul, I have no religious thoughts, as such, to share. Some people have life "flash before their eyes," but others get plenty of time to imagine the world without them in it. Unless your picture is distorted by some other illness, the very idea that suffering is less preferable than death is patently absurd. I don't know how this idea has gotten a foothold! I have to believe that people haven't actually enjoyed anything; that is, allowed themselves to co-mingle with the stuff of Earth, to plant a flag and say, "I was here!"

The spark of life is the difference between living, and simply existing. If you're honestly afraid of physical suffering, ask yourself why. Because in my experience, while I can point to moments that were hellish, and tough to endure, the pain is somehow suffused with every joyful moment of what it has been like to be me. To commiserate in the pain is one kind of solidarity, and the joy from the spark of life is another. The reason why we are so sad when others die is because we have seen this spark of life; we have seen the planted flag. Whatever the soul is, it is this spark of life. If you are so sure you want to "pull the plug," you may not have considered how the spark of your life has colored every other one. I'm not talking about tough decisions about extraordinary measures; I'm asking you whether you regard yourself so slightly.

We are the stuff of Earth, too; when this sadness touches us, it's because that spark of life has somehow co-mingled with us. When we love, we are never the same. I am irrevocably The One Who Was Loved. It's never the same, but it's true with every friendship, no matter how brief.

To push back death for at least a few moments is to rejoice in friendship with myself. It's to say--to see--that there is something about me that I can't see from inside, at least not always. It's pretty amazing to say to the Maker of all things, "Hey, pretty good!" It's not vanity, because whatever makes me me is not completely mine.


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