Drawing by Franz Kafka
We are shut in and shut out. Perhaps we are paying for our sins. Sins against our wives and husbands, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. And they, at least the ones who are still alive, are paying for their sins against us. A harsh penalty for all, but maybe we deserved it.
Many of us are in solitary confinement. The isolation is the hardest to bear. In total despair, you take the gun from the drawer. Young beautiful girls and boys who have only begun to live. Loneliness can be worse than death. Death becomes instant release. You don’t even hear the gunshot. You will see your dead loved ones before the gun falls from your hand.
Or you won’t. That’s the chance you take. If you don’t see them you won’t know it. That’s the fail-safe feature of the ungodly plan, so we don’t exist in an eternity of misery. The Godly plan has a different outcome. You can read about it in the Bible. Millions have. Millions believe in the Godly plan.
Belief in the Godly plan requires faith, and faith is the most elusive creature in the human psyche. Even if you think you’ve got it by the tail, it’s hard to hold onto. It’s Jehovah’s jackrabbit.
You could spend all your days and weeks and months and years in isolation just trying to grab hold of that jackrabbit.
If you do manage to get a firm grasp on it, hang onto it for dear life. It will take you home, and all the isolation and the loneliness in the ungodly world will be but a moment in hell.
The truth of your words gives me chills. (Well, it could also be the extra air conditioning in the office today.) This is such a real slice of life piece of writing. It is like a prose poem. (Mary Oliver wrote some beautiful prose poems.)
You are too kind. Thank you. I only wish I could be as half as good (one-tenth would do) as Mary Oliver, she who wrote:
“Tell me,
what is it you plan to do
with your one
wild and precious life?”