Dying sucks mostly, I think, because we don't know what comes after. Sure, everyone has their own ideas about heaven
or nirvana or reincarnation or Magic Voodoo Candyland or whatever, but even the people who believe in those things enough
to lay their lives down for them still don't have any idea what they're really like. None of the scriptures or texts I've
ever read make any effort to describe them in any detail, though once I read this book and I think it was by Billy Graham
(who I have a lot of respect for, except for this one book) and he answered all these bonehead questions like "Are there pets
in Heaven?" Anyway, none of those texts talk about Heaven and that makes sense if you consider that it's probably much like
trying to describe the color blue to a blind person.
I'm thinking about this because someone asked me what I would do if I had three days to live. Now, the answer to that
question surely says a lot about a person's character, but not in the way you're probably thinking. I don't think anyone really
knows what they'd do and, considering the way most people die, three days is either a really long time or a really short time.
When you get down to it, we're all dying.
I know a guy who has a terminal illness, and it's an illness that most people don't survive past the age of 12, and he's
41. I'm not kidding. And you know how you hear so many stories about people like that who are inspiring and courageous, how
they don't let their illness defeat them and face life with optimism and hope? This guy doesn't do any of that. He complains
all the time. About everything. He is the most negative, depressing guy you ever met.
He doesn't complain about his disease, oddly enough. He doens't complain about having to go to the hospital, or medicine,
or even that he's probably going to die in the next few years and he certainly will never get any better than he is now, or
how unfair all that is. No: He complains about the cost of gas and what brand of milk they serve at TGI Fridays. He takes
20 minutes to order a hamburger and then sends it back for whatever reason. Once he dated a bikini model and told everyone
that she needed to lose three pounds. Once in high school he went out with this girl that EVERYONE was so totally in love
with, then he went camping with her dad and they came home early because he complained that there was no cheese for his eggs.
Most folks want to cut him slack because of his disease, but it's for precisely that reason that I don't cut him any
slack at all. I think he's toxic. I've tried to encourage him, many times, but I keep having the same conversation with him
over and over and I've just concluded that he doesn't want anything to ever get any better.
I think the real test of character is what would you do if you had three seconds to live.
Like, you know that movie Red Dawn, when the Russians take all those prisoners and have them dig a long trench
so that they can bury them in it? I would never do that, and I don't know why anyone would. You're digging your own grave,
dude. It's not one of those situations where you can kid yourself into thinking that if you do a good enough job, they
might be so impressed with you that they let you live. It's a grave.
I don't really think about dying though if I did I would probably take comfort in thoughts of heaven. It does seem really
awesome though it does suck that you have to die to get there. To me that's like God saying you can have a Hawaiian vacation
but first you have to get hit in the head with a shovel.
