Life is a Bag of Dicks

Life is a bag of dicks.  

At this time, I encourage you to make your own sex joke or pun, if so desired.

In all honesty, the above sentiment isn't an apt metaphor; in fact it may not even be a metaphor.  If it is a metaphor, then it breaks down rapidly, unable to bear the weight of it's intended meaning.  If it is metaphor, it's a fucking terrible metaphor altogether, ill fitting for the situation.  Though I suppose it's ill fitted nature in itself makes is the most appropriate. Life can suck, it can be horrible, and sometimes it doesn't fit any meaning that you'd like to ascribe to it. 

Regardless of the phrase's purpose, there is something in that statement that feels viscerally satisfying. There is something blunt and baldly honest in the phrase; it's crude and harsh in a way that feel right for describing the macabre farce that is life.  And in a way, it's even a bit humorous, a bit of gallows humor all to appropriate to existence.  Especially if one contemplates the possible origination of the statement.

I could research the origin of the phrase, but I'm certain that its true history could never match the humor of my imaginings.  Yet the question remains: why is there a bag of dicks?  Are there just a few in there, or are there several? Dear god, how big is this bag?  And just how were these dicks obtained?  And just whom is it that collects said dicks?  Is there a team of dick collectors, or is just one highly dedicated person? The ideas behind this are horrifying.  Unless the dicks came from child molesters and rapists, in which case it is still utterly disgusting, but not as morally questionable. 

Yet that strange dichotomy, of something so horrific lurking beneath humor, is what gives the phrase its validity on the subject: the phrase seems bad enough on the surface of things, but the more you dig into it, the more you contemplate its meaning, the more horrifying it is.  Just like life.

But I guess this takes us back to iconic optimist/pessimist dichotomy: the glass is either half full or half empty.  Of course, this also relates to one's view of life.  Life is either an experience of meaning, caused by some force, or it's just an astronomical accident of existence that ultimately means nothing.  I personally subscribe to the atom collision idea; that we're just here, so we should make the best of it.  Of course, this leads to another dichotomy: selfish versus selfless. 

Looking at the world around us, we can see the selfish nature of life as evidenced by the countless displays of greed and cruelty we see on our screens everyday.  I do agree with the notion that there is no such thing as a truly selfless or kind act, because we all expect or get something from a charitable act, whether it be a tax write-off or just that glow of feeling good.  Yet the selfish nature of that selfless act is still a far sight less selfish that the plainly selfish greed displayed by other.  Some people live their lives by the motto "he who dies with the most toys, wins," a purely selfish motive.  But others feel that, even if they get something for themselves when they do something kind, at least they sort of spread out the good in life.  Since this is all there is to existence, some hold that they'll get what the can before they go, while others feel, why not try to lessen the misery of others? 

[Now, please prepare yourself for a trite, Christmas-time tie-in.]

So this holiday season, remember, life is a bag of dicks, and just generally sucks.  But try to enjoy it where you can, and make life suck just a little bit less for everyone else.

The Joy of Believing in Nothing

I tend to be fairly pragmatic when it comes to decision making.  At their core, the answers to your questions are binary.  You either do something, or you don't do it.  You either believe it, or you don't. The outcome is irrelevant, as is any reasoning behind the decision.  There is typically a yes or no, on or off option at the bottom of any choice.  How you interpret your decision, and the "why" of your decision, is what makes you who you are.  Religion is a prime example of this.

The question of "do you believe in a higher power?" has little to do with your specific belief system.  You either do, or you don't.  If you ascribe to any number mono or polythiestic belief systems, than you quite obviously belive in a higher power.  If you believe in fate, then yes, you believe in a higher power.  A seemingly infinite number of beliefs, with one common answer.   "No" means that you believe there is no higher power, no external, willful force capable.  The only other answer is "yes".  Even if your answer is "maybe," you likely have your answer.  Every agnostic I've met had a leaning, an inclination. Some thought that the existence of a higher power was likely impossible, or that there was something but they just couldn't know what.

I have read articles and essays in which the authors describes the basis of their belief in atheism.  Many attributed their belief to the absolutes of science, to the fact that science seems to follow its own laws where religion has none. Or that there is no God, because before the Big Bang there was nothing, including a god (I think that last one was Stephen Hawking). I found my answer to the question of a god for much more emotional reasons.  For me, the question was never "is there a higher power?", it was "if there is a god, how does he account for the suffering in the world?"

I think my faith in God as an all powerful deity started to fall apart when I read the early testament.  Laws about the correct way to deal with slavery, rules allowing slavery, and how if an virgin is raped, her rapist either has to pay her father money, or marry her; it's up to the father.  It was the idea that was just as sinful for me to think about sex as it was for man who on his wife. That Hitler could have begged forgiveness and gone to paradise.  It was the idea that I was a bad person for thinking bad things, even if I didn't do them.  There first time I read all of this, I just felt angry at how unfair it all was. And then I felt terrible. Because I would never be good, and each natural thought and desire I had as a prepubescent teen made my inadequate. For a socially anxious teen with self-esteem issues, those notions weighed me down.

These doubts were never far from my mind.  Whenever I discuss the issue of suffering in general terms with someone of faith, their answers tend to fall into one of three basic categories: "it's God will", "it's the outcome of human free will, given to us by God," or "God's reasons are not for us to know."  I say bullshit.  I was raised to believe that God so loved the world, he gave his only son for the sake of humanity.  But that same God, only a few millenia before (and in the second book of Peter, they say that "With the Lord... a thousand years are like a day"), God felt that we were all too wicked, so he decided  "fuck 'em all, they can go drown." 

All of my life, I couldn't stop thinking about the cruelty of man.  In college, I did a bible study with an older couple I'd known for years. I asked them some of the questions that had been building in the back of my mind.  Like the Holocaust; seriously, 6 million Jews, and 5 million others of "undesirable" status were killed in the concentration camps, to say nothing of the others killed in the crossfire. How could a loving god let that happen?

My surrogate grandfather answered yes, it was cruel, that it was sad, but that Jews were a "hard-hearted people."  I can't really recall what he said after that in any details, that's the phrase that sticks out.  The remainder of his words were just hollow reiterations of what I'd always heard.  It was God's will, and that we can't know why it happened, but God does allow us the free will to make our own decisions.  I would take two ideas away from this conversation, ideas I couldn't believe, but that I was starting to understand were the rote actions of many religious people: victim blaming the those that have suffered, and the glossing over of the serious questions with difficult actions.  But that was when I was presented with my first question: was the bible the word of God, or was is it just the word of man?

I wanted to believe that there was someone out there, someone powerful who loved me, who cared for me.  The cruelty shown in the bible by God and those who followed him seemed unfathomable.  Yet it was nothing when compared with the suffering since.  So, I made my first decision: the bible was just words, nothing more than a historical text.  I still believed that there was a God, and the ideas in the bible, the tenants espoused by Jesus, that was what mattered.  It was the love in those words, not in the ugly parts written in an attempt to control other men. The question of whether or not God existed wasn't even on the table.  That question didn't start lurking in my mind until I was in my 20's.

As I grew older, I declared myself agnostic. But at that time, I was really just a confused christian. I still believed, still wanted to believe in God.  But that faith, my ability to blindly believe, was slipping. Of course, this was when my depression started to worsen, and I was frantically seeking any lifeline, any way to make myself feel loved.  At this time, I became incapable of truly seeing the cruelty and capricious nature of life. I knew it existed, but I could barely fathom the numb chaos in my own mind; I couldn't handle facing the sorrows of the world.

It was in my mid 20's that the tide truly began to turn. I was somewhat balanced and I forced myself to see the things that were happening in the world. I forced myself to look at worldwide human rights abuses, the terrible abuses seen in followers of all faiths, the greed of all mankind, and the widespread poverty that crosses all borders.  If there was a God, he allowed a lot of suffering.  So it was at this time I needed to answer another question: was God good?

This was the question that led me to atheism. Because suffering exists, it is a basic truth. So God either allowed it because he would not intercede on our free will, or he had his own reasons, a plan.  Neither notion sat well with me. I didn't care if he was all powerful, he was all seeing.  I couldn't understand how he could see all the suffering in the world, listen to parents cry over the bodies of murdered children, watch as humans starved, allowed mass killings, all while not sending down a lightning bolt or two.  Because I sure as hell wouldn't allow it.  If I was omnipotent, rapists, child molesters, and unflinchingly greedy would get fried, with nothing left except a scorched message on the ground reading "Big God AG hates rapists/child molesters/ greed." I would stop it and people would know why.

I realized that I didn't care why God allowed suffering; what mattered was that he did allow it.  This epiphany shook my faith that a god, any god existed. If a God did exist, he didn't care. We were as important to him as ants to a toddler.  In fact, the only reasonable religion to my mind was the Greek Pantheon.  Yeah, there was suffering, and yeah, the gods caused it.  But they were spoiled, self centered deities, hardly capable of thinking beyond themselves. Their cruelty made sense.

I found myself faced with a choice: did I believe, did I want to believe, in an uncaring higher power. The notion of a cruel, capricious higher power made me feel ill.  And it made me mad.  As long as there was a god, there was someone we could blame, someone we could point to as we shirked our responsibilities to our fellow humans. Thus, I came to my last questions: is there even a god?

My answer was a resounding no that echoed in my heart and my mind.  I decided that all we had, all we had ever had was, at best, a shared belief to encourage good behavior that at its worst gave us the ammunition to forsake each other.  But after I made this decision, I was just happy, because it made things seem easier.  I wasn't a bad person for my thoughts; I was a bad person if I did bad.  Thoughts and beliefs meant nothing; it was what I did, what anyone did, that mattered. It meant that we have to fight for this life, because it's the only one we have.  Because life isn't a trial to decide your fate in heaven or hell.  Life is the entirety of our existance, and our actions are what define us.

Goodbye, Chester

When I saw the headline from the Daily Mirror, I couldn't believe it. I just assumed it was one of those fake headlines, and with a knotted stomach, I clicked the link, waiting for the rick roll.  Of course the punchline didn't come, and I reacted the way I do to most bad news: I froze. I went numb and felt nothing. 10 hours later, it brought tears to my eyes.

In my early 20's, my closest friend jokingly referred to it as my love of "angry, white-boy rock."  I didn't have the words then to explain my connection to the sadness and rage in Chester Bennington's words. I couldn't explain why the frustrated sadness and rage made more sense to me than the artful alienation of David Bowie.  But I want to explain, as well as I can, why I love Linkin Park.  I want to explain what they mean to me, and why Chester Bennington's suicide makes me cry.

The context is, of course, everything.  I grew up in a rural area, where there were two radio stations to choose from: one pop and one country. So I listened to the radio and clenched my teeth through boy bands and Britney Spears to find tolerable pop rock groups. I had missed the grunge years, and found myself in the middle of a pop hell that never matched the anxiety and fear I hid behind spiked hair and baggy clothes. All I had was a discordant soundtrack of Hanson and NSYNC played over anxiety and self loathing.

Hybrid Theory, their first album came out in 2000, my first year of college. That was when I first realized just how bad my depression was. It's when I first realized that it was depression and not just being over emotional. I was figuring out that the infrequent highs, regular lows, and general numbness weren't just hormonal changes, but a lingering specter that would never go away.

As I vacillated between numbness and anxiety, sadness, and rage, I felt as though my physical form hadn't been put together properly.  As if some immutable aspect of myself was wrong, like a shattered bone that never healed right.  But I kept smiling, kept doing my homework and going to class.  I didn't know what else to do. All the while, I felt like something was slipping away from me. I felt stretched thin and on the verge of breaking, trapped in an invisible tomb that kept me from the world, yet no one could see it. And amid the overwhelming numbness was a looming terror of what would happen when I finally broke.  This is who I was when I first heard Linkin Park.

I remember sitting on an orange couch the first time I saw a Linkin Park video. At first, I seemed a bit over the top, like a bunch of suburban boys playing badass. Then I heard the rage filled cries of Bennington.  Bennington's rage and pain were never an act. They were a part of his demons, exorcised, as he screamed out. When he sang "everything you say to me, brings me one step closer to the edge, and I'm about to break," something in me clicked. The music resonated with me, connected with the sadness, confusion and anger I felt.  It was the notion that something was lurking, hidden, with the power to break me.  

But at the same time, there was a strength, a will to remain unbeaten.  Chester sang these words, these fears, but continued on.  At that time, I sought every scrap of hope that my depression could be conquered.  All of the dark thoughts I'd tried to imagine as figments, Bennington would scream, but survive.  He made me feel less alone. He made me feel like all of my anger and sadness could make me stronger.  

Knowing that he killed himself hurts.  A part of me felt that if he survived, so could I.  But that was never my choice, and I am not him.  We all make our own choices, and he made his.  My heart aches for his wife and children.  I lost my own father to illness, and I can't imagine how they feel.  But my heart breaks for Chester.  

Because what people don't seem to understand is that for so many of us, depression isn't a one time battle; it's an endless war.  When you feel worse, you play with your meds, talk it out, hope for the upswing that can years to arrive.  Sometimes, I'm lucky to reach a state of melancholic normality as opposed to the oppressive numbness.  It's exhausting on a on a bone deep level.  It's a feeling that you either recognize or don't, and it can't ever by truly explained to you.

During the past, when I would contemplate suicide, I would think of my family, of my friends.  Of how I couldn't abandon them.  The more exhausted and disconnected I felt, the longer it took to for me to remember them.  For Chester to have chosen suicide, I can only imagine how tired he was of that endless battle.  I imagine he made this choice because he was so exhausted that he could no longer face another 41 years of downs interspersed with a hard-won happiness.  I think that in the end, death didn't seem like a bad thing, but permanent surcease from the endless struggles in his mind. I think in the end, he was just so tired he felt everyone would be better off without him.

I feel terrible for his family.  I know that his death, his decision to end his life, has shattered his family, and their pain is unfathomable to me.  But I can understand why he did it.  I just wish with every fiber of my being that he'd found a way to keep fighting for his family.

I'm sorry it wasn't easier for you, Chester.  But your words helped me.  And though you'll never read these words, or even know who I was, I hope you've found some measure peace that you never had in life.