by minimus 58 Replies latest jw friends
I'm still adjusting to the fact, but I just finished Camus' The Stranger and I love Merseault's attitude at the end of the book as he is facing death:
"...for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world."
about 2 years ago, i realized that the "millions now living will never die" was bullshit. i realized then that i would die an old man(hopefully). i also realized that i probably would have a better chance at living forever if i died and was resurrected than if armageddon started now. that is, IF everything jw's says is true, which is probably NOT true, which means this reply is bullshit and i'm going to fix another drink and go to sleep.
first i read this subtle little statement...
Studying the "Revelation" book ten years ago for the bookstudy. My brain was laughing but my heart was crying.
and my heart broke.
and then i read this...
A few years back. It suddenly dawned on me that one day I would NEVER see or hold my husband again.Im sorry gill :(We would NEVER ever know, see or be together and I would lose him forever.
I thought I would never stop crying.
Now I accept the inevitable.
Now, we LIVE every day as if it was our last and we are finally very very very happy.
That terrible day will come, but, not with the same awesome, dreadful shock and I hope there will be no regrets and nothing left unsaid.
Oh, Chrissy! Thanks.
It's all too sad really. Here we are, totally insignificant, some living happy lives and some in constant emotional or physical pain. We have a beautiful gift of being alive and forming loving, bonds, but in a split second everything that matters to us can be gone. We are so powerless, standing on the cliff edge of time, holding onto the ones we love and gradually the cliff erodes under our feet and we fall.
But time goes on without us. It's a road we can never see the end of. We're just 'road kill'.
I always expected, being a dumb 'born into' JW, to see the end of the road. To see forever. I was no speck of dust to wiped off the sideboard when God felt like dusting.
Now...I know that one day, one day, it will be over. What's the point of being a floating spirit when those you love are not there with you. There must be a lot of 'ghosts' with broken hearts.
At least dying ends the pain.
The fact that there is no good with out bad, and no positive without negative, is just that, a fact.
There is no happiness without sadness and... no life, without death.
You know..I didnt really think too much about it until about a year or so after I actually left, when I was pregnant with my 2nd child.
I had an incredible wave of an awareness of mortality swept over me. I had never feared dying so much before. I felt it again with my last pregnancy, but not as bad.
It makes me sad sometimes, to think it is not true. It did comfort me when my dad died, because he had seemed to be coming around shortly before he died (he was an unbelieving mate).
It doesn't make me as upset as it used to. It just makes me want to make sure I make the most out of life...because it is probably the only one I am gonna get.
I first realized that I was going to die when I was 20. I still thought a new world was coming but that it was a long way away. I found it hard to come to terms with living my whole life in a world I had been trained since birth to hate. I had suicidal thoughts and wanted to get death over with and end the pain immediately. It was another 10 years before I left the Watchtower Society.
I now believe that death may simply be a transition, a passing over. I guess we will only know for sure when the time comes. I don’t know if we agreed to come here, but if we did we would have known we would have to leave.
Either way I am not afraid of death. The world will manage without me and I have already had more than my share of good times on this dangerous but wonderful planet.
i never believed i'd die or grow old for that matter. but then again, i never believed i'd be more than twenty years old somewhen when i was a teen.
growing old still is far off, so i never think about it. haven't planned my life yet. the idea of growing old actually came from my wife. she always thought we'd grow old and die somewhen. it was disturbing for me as a believing dub. but maybe this also helped me to think out of the box.
The problem is that, you don't necessarily have to grow old to die!
What a sad thread.
Anyway, it did not realize it all of a sudden.
It came to me very slowly. Maybe I am not as smart or my denial took longer. Over a time period of about two years all things why I believed were destroyed by closer examination and study. Not any argument remained to believe in a God, and without no God, no everlasting life. Dead is the end, that's it.
This was only a few years ago. Did not mkae me happy this realization, but not mad at the JW's also.
It did not really change my life. After a first sadness, there was also some relief. Some understanding of why I never fitte in the JW religion and was never happy at the first place.
Still not really over it, still wondering how to waste my live.....
Danny
For me it's weird. I mean when I was younger (teenager & very early 20's) and just making my way in the world - I truly beleived we were going to live forever in paradise. But as life progressed and the questions starting slipping in, that "dream" faded pretty radically.
Then suddenly this year it clicked - I'm going to day and that may just be it. There could very well be no ""after life"" (spiritual) WOW - Huge freak out moment - I had an inner shakey panicy kinda feeling & suddenly I questioned the existance of God.
Now - If we die - we die - that's cool by me.
