Face/off
People just don't want to accept trade offs anymore. Lately I've seen a rash of articles pointing an angry finger at God over the Asian tsunami disaster, as in "Where have you been?" What exactly was God doing when tidal waves struck without warning, killing 100,000 people and leaving their orphaned children to be "claimed" by pedophiles and black market gangsters and the like. Was he sleeping in? Playing pinochle? Watching Fight Club over and over, determined to find out what the big deal is? Might I add that these questions are being posed by pretentious columnists like William Safire and Heather MacDonald from the safety of their Manhattan brownstones, and then perhaps more pointedly by the actual victims of the tragedy, with heads thrown back in Shawkshank Redemption-esque cries for explanation.
And so Ms. MacDonald has the audacity to point the finger, saying, and I quote, "God has gone too far this time." At least she's on the right track with that brand of accusation, as opposed to asking where he was. Yes, it was his idea. And though it's unfair that anyone should be so coldly and anonymously done away with, it has to happen. Can you imagine a world where bad things didn't happen? I don't mean bad things like "I dropped a fifty dollar bill" or "an elephant stepped on my foot." I mean like "a tidal wave swallowed my parents and now I'm with an opium dealer named Philippe on my way to a flesh market in Singapore." Without great tragedy, there is no such thing as joy. They can't exist independently.
Let's take one of those smaller examples for a minute: I'm sick right now. For the last three days I've been shivering and stumbling about in a world that leaves me slightly delirious. My rib cage aches from coughing, and I'm pretty sure that one of these times there just gonna splinter like a bundle of sticks. There's this pain behind my eyes that renders me like dogs in Shaun of the Dead: I can't look up. Trivial complaints, in light of the suffering that is encompassing so much of the globe, but in my little sphere of existence it's pretty unpleasant. Now, can you comprehend how much this is going to make me appreciate a future that surely can't be too far away in which I won't have to cough every few seconds and sneeze so hard that it feels like my brain is pulling the emergency eject lever?
I'm almost out of typing energy, so I'll wrap this up. The point of tragedy is to make survivors remember what they have, and if God has to commit the occasional generation-destroying blast of divine punishment to the cause, then so be it. Easy for me to say, from the safety of my college apartment. But it's the truth. If it happened to me, I would surely shake my first and curse his name, but someone has to take the fall. It's up to us to make sure the ends justify the means.
And so Ms. MacDonald has the audacity to point the finger, saying, and I quote, "God has gone too far this time." At least she's on the right track with that brand of accusation, as opposed to asking where he was. Yes, it was his idea. And though it's unfair that anyone should be so coldly and anonymously done away with, it has to happen. Can you imagine a world where bad things didn't happen? I don't mean bad things like "I dropped a fifty dollar bill" or "an elephant stepped on my foot." I mean like "a tidal wave swallowed my parents and now I'm with an opium dealer named Philippe on my way to a flesh market in Singapore." Without great tragedy, there is no such thing as joy. They can't exist independently.
Let's take one of those smaller examples for a minute: I'm sick right now. For the last three days I've been shivering and stumbling about in a world that leaves me slightly delirious. My rib cage aches from coughing, and I'm pretty sure that one of these times there just gonna splinter like a bundle of sticks. There's this pain behind my eyes that renders me like dogs in Shaun of the Dead: I can't look up. Trivial complaints, in light of the suffering that is encompassing so much of the globe, but in my little sphere of existence it's pretty unpleasant. Now, can you comprehend how much this is going to make me appreciate a future that surely can't be too far away in which I won't have to cough every few seconds and sneeze so hard that it feels like my brain is pulling the emergency eject lever?
I'm almost out of typing energy, so I'll wrap this up. The point of tragedy is to make survivors remember what they have, and if God has to commit the occasional generation-destroying blast of divine punishment to the cause, then so be it. Easy for me to say, from the safety of my college apartment. But it's the truth. If it happened to me, I would surely shake my first and curse his name, but someone has to take the fall. It's up to us to make sure the ends justify the means.