Offended by Sanity

T. K. Oih

I have been blessed with a group of friends. We communicate through an online application where you type text in a little white box and it appears above for others to see. We call this activity »chatting». Lately many of these friends, to my surprise, have expressed their resentment of how I choose to participate in this chatting. I suppose it all began when someone proclaimed that I can’t reply to their serious posts by wildly bashing the keyboard or by typing a series of random numbers. Yet I can and I do. What else do they expect? Whenever I express my condolences for their ceaseless sorrows and woes with a wholehearted »awww!» they accuse me of insincerity. Have I not made it plain that I am nothing but insincere? Have I not made it plain on the numerous times they have asked if I care about them at all or how I would feel if one of them were to kill himself? In situations such as those, or in any situation, I have always given my honest answer, even if a blatant lie would clearly have been preferred. People want to feel important. If they can’t achieve enough in life, they fool themselves to believe they can make some big impact in death. Yet I feel that if any of my friends, many of whom I respect and love to a great extent, were to go through with the dreary act of suicide, I would be disappointed but not shocked. It certainly would not affect my own life in any significant way. Therefore to all of you who are planning to give up on this existence and potentially give it another go at a later time I have but this to say: »Think again! You will find happiness! You are a radiating beacon of light! Or alternatively: don’t forget to grease the rope.»

Few things spark as much controversy as our attitude towards death. In cinema and in news death is often presented as a tragic or at the very least an unfortunate event. Many have adopted this view and apply it in their everyday lives, often with absurd results. To them every dead relative, acquaintance, celebrity or person in a tabloid is a valid reason to burst in tears. Naturally this kind of erratic behaviour is enough reason for me to question their sanity. That said, what I find truly unacceptable is that they get severely upset and arrogant when they notice I’m not participating in their pitiful lament. They refuse to accept that I’m not sad: »Surely you would feel different if it happened to you! What if it was your mother? Has anyone close to you even died?» Yes, as a matter of fact the old ones are dropping like flies. But old people are supposed to die, and to grieve for them would be foolish. When I point this out to my dear friends, however, they mob up against me and accuse me of being mean to them! But it is not so, for I am like Jesus: I hate not the sick but the sickness.

If someone wants to mourn the dead, they are by all means free to do so, just as free as they are to mourn a rotten apple or a burnt out light bulb. But according to my statistics, thank God, this constant whining over every dead person is mainly an American anomaly. None of my European friends find it particularly alarming that to me death is an exclusively joyous occasion. And why would they? What is there not to be happy of? For every dead person there is one person less to abuse natural resources and advance the destruction of the millions of non-human species we are directly or indirectly oppressing every moment of our lives without the slightest of remorse. These constant extinctions would be something worthy of grief, not the singular deaths of individuals of a species so supreme that its only natural threat is its own delusion of grandeur. Unsurprisingly the same people who mourn the death of a man are more than happy to celebrate the birth of a child.

Because I am so rational about this issue, I am often accused of not having emotions. This is not the case. I do have emotions. But I am not my emotions. And I recognize that my emotions, not being an integral part of me, are even less significant than myself. And what could be less significant than myself? My emotions. Therefore my emotions are not significant at all, and while I don’t mind observing them for my own amusement like I might observe the weather or the cars driving past my window, I see no reason to present them to others as if they were some kind of evidence of my humanity.

I have nothing against people showing their emotions. What troubles me is that so many of them obviously lack any will to control their emotions. It appears that in this regard I’m better equipped than most and have only myself and my previous incarnations to thank for it. But when the people I consider my friends dare to claim that I’m only acting emotionless to make myself better than them, how could I possibly respond to that? The Qabalah says that everything is connected, which makes every linguistic relation equally unimportant. What truly matters is the bottomless abyss, the darkness that comes before the light — and, as one beholding the nature of that light is inclined to hope, will come soon after as well.