Gotta Kick at the Darkness Until it Bleeds Daylight

Scott and I have reached, quite happily, the one year mark of our relationship. To celebrate this I wrote him a three page story about my blossoming interest in seeing him naked--er, interest in seeing him (branching back from where I first noticed him in calculus class). We had a very nice dinner at the Grizzly Grill, where gourmet pizza and a rich flavoured chocolate dessert didn't stand a chance against two empty stomachs and two tongues just waiting to lavish anything they came in contact with. Our discussion was never ending, fuelled by our love of one another and an entire bottle of wine.

One of the topics discussed was death, or the fear of. Scott told me a story where consciousness and body were separated, and consciousness and machine were united--creating an ability to live forever. He also told me that, given the technology standards today and given the exponential growth of the knowledge, this wouldn’t be impossible and that it could probably happen within a couple of centuries. If given the chance, would you want to live forever? Scott would in a second; he does not like the fact that there’s a chance where nothingness will engulf you once you pass on. He also does not like the fact that, because of all the scare mongering religion has bestowed on the masses, hell is a possibility. Hell, if it does exist, is essentially for eternity, and if one does have the opportunity to go, they would not like it in the least. That’s when I got into my spiel of existentialism, and, more specifically, Albert Camus’s take on the Myth of Sisyphus. Long story short, Camus said that Sisyphus, despite his mundane task of rolling a boulder up hill, only for it to roll back again and thus starting over, would eventually find happiness within by facing and accepting the absurdity etc etc. Whilst discussing this, I remembered an episode of Eek! The Cat (remember that show??) which encompassed Camus’s take on this so brilliantly. Basically Eek was sent to hell for one reason or another, where he was faced with the devil himself. The devil, doing what apparent devils do best, tried to give him the most tedious and mundane of tasks imaginable. The only task I remember Eek being sentenced to was the one where he stood afoot from a never ending field of grass, containing an infinite amount of pointy-prickly weeds to which Eek had to pick. The devil went onto other errands involving torture and left Eek to it. Little did the devil know Eek was an optimistic fuck willing to help anyone and everyone (though more often than not he ended up accidentally doing more wrong than good), and went to his task with the greatest smile on his face--thinking he was helping the devil. Anyways, long story short, after completing his task, he finds the devil and /asks/ for another one. Eek knew he was in hell for eternity, and so accepted this absurd fate. Much to the devil’s dislike, Eek was completing more and more mundane tasks and asking for thirds and fourths, not breaking his smile. Eventually, Eek is tossed out of hell. A happy ending resulted, despite the stigma of an eternal hell. Brilliant cartoon, though I didn’t appreciate the episode 12 or so years ago.

For some reason it’s in the human condition to think the grass is greener on the other side. Scott wanted to live forever because, for some reason, he thought the future would make him a hellovalot happier than what the present holds. What’s wrong with the present? Accept the absurdity of it now, hope for the best, and find your happiness. Find the beauty of being alive today instead of the beauty of living one hundred years from now. God knows that, say, in one hundred years (if you’re able to live for eternity) you’ll be in the same boat (well, high-tech rocket spaceship…you are, after all, one hundred years into the future) as you are now: Continuing to think that happiness is held in the hands of the future.

Besides, every good book has a good ending.

However, let’s play the devil’s advocate: you are able to live forever, and all of your friends are able to too (assuming they want to), and you had the legal ability of euthanasia (which should be legal anyways, but that’s a different topic). This way, you could take your own life (with out it being frowned upon) whenever you wanted--you could die at your happiest. Now it would become a game of chance--are you really the happiest you could be? What about the future? Shit, a war? I should have killed myself years ago. Etc. No one would kill themselves because they would constantly think that future is greener than the present.

Let’s take this a step further and say you could live forever, and be happy forever. If everything is as we think it should be, who says we need to change it? Life needs contrast--you need to be sad and unhappy in order to truly feel what happiness encompasses. You know what love and hate feels like because you’re able to contrast the two. If you were able to take one emotion (happiness) with out the other (sadness), happiness wouldn’t be as special as it once was; it would be some bland, mediocre emotion torn to pieces with the boredom of it all. It would be a constant state of limbo, which, in a sense, would be worse than hell. Life is all about contrast and change--it’s how we’re able to say we’re really happy. I believe it was said best with “you gotta kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.”

So it all boils down to being afraid of change. Instead of fearing change, embrace it--accept its absurdity, if you will.


Wow, and I have babbled for far too long.