Fred, Ted, Dread, and Dead in Bed; Scenes from the Journey, vol. 23, no. 5

Fred, Ted, Dread, and Dead in Bed

To dread is human.

If that's what you believe, please keep your dread to a dull roar so the rest of us can hear Life's carnival cacophony.

I've been contemplating the dread of death in a new way lately. No longer insouciant in willful blindness, I've been staring it in the eye, making myself look at the uncertainty. Well, actually, the certainty.

We humans love the sure thing, love knowing what will be. So you'd think the certainty that none of us will get out of this alive would be right up our alley. The problem is that we can't help focusing on what comes after that certain thing. When we come up against the ultimate unknowable, it's easy to see why we create imagined certitudes: heaven, hell, a tunnel filled with demons that tempt and lights that deceive, loved ones open-armed on the other side of the void, and so forth.

We create our feeble fantasies to ward off the dread. So here's everything I know for sure about this topic (I dread telling you): nothing.

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Fred, Ted, Dread, and Dead in Bed; Scenes from the Journey, vol. 23, no. 5

Fred, Ted, Dread, and Dead in Bed

To dread is human.

If that's what you believe, please keep your dread to a dull roar so the rest of us can hear Life's carnival cacophony.

I've been contemplating the dread of death in a new way lately. No longer insouciant in willful blindness, I've been staring it in the eye, making myself look at the uncertainty. Well, actually, the certainty.

We humans love the sure thing, love knowing what will be. So you'd think the certainty that none of us will get out of this alive would be right up our alley. The problem is that we can't help focusing on what comes after that certain thing. When we come up against the ultimate unknowable, it's easy to see why we create imagined certitudes: heaven, hell, a tunnel filled with demons that tempt and lights that deceive, loved ones open-armed on the other side of the void, and so forth.

We create our feeble fantasies to ward off the dread. So here's everything I know for sure about this topic (I dread telling you): nothing.

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Choosing; Scenes from the Journey, vol. 23, no. 4

Choosing

It's a choice, she says.

It's a deliberate opting for this

and not that.

Let me be specific and name the choices:

On one side: joy, life, curiosity.

On the other side is the easier,

more familiar, option:

the complaining dullard repulsed

by anything new.

Choices, choices.

Which will serve best?

Someone wrote:

Life is an adventure, not a catastrophe

(actually, I think they said "predicament", not catastrophe).

Can you try to remember that, please?

Tattoo it on your forehead, perhaps?

And remember also that change is the only constant.

Who you once were is not who you are.

You were formed by past experiences

(oh woe is me, alas, alack)

but

you are not still that person.

Choose well.

Greet the day with the explosion of happiness

that it deserves.

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