I read a headline today: "Virtual Reality Therapy Lets Seniors Relive the Past." Sent that to my buddies with the codicil, "Maybe we have discovered Heaven and Hell. The good ones will get to relive the good parts and the bad ones will have to relive all the horrors of their lives."
It is an interesting proposal. What if you had to guess which you were? How do you evaluate your own deeds and life?
And if you were really good, would you, as C.C. has suggested, get to relive the life you wish you'd had?
Would you rather not take the chance and just settle for pickle ball?
I'm not feeling well at all today. Had a very rough and painful night, waking up alone in the inky blackness wanting to cry out for help on the one hand and not wanting anyone to see me suffering on the other. I am terribly fearful of illness. I am not at all brave about this. Worse. Much, much worse. All my plans for today are out the window. I'll be resting and monitoring, hoping, wishing, praying.
It doesn't seem fair. Is this what I get for allowing myself to be almost happy? Oh. . . you don't about this yet. But I am not going to report it through a feeble veil of infirmity. I'll save it for a sunshine day when I am once again immortal.
Until then. . . .
“I will take the life I wish I had had for $500, Alex.”
ReplyDeleteJeopardy for real, old sport. If we had had the life, we wish we had had would we have the life we have now? Chances are we would not be alive at all. I took enough foolish risks hopping freight trains, jumping off trestles, and driving five hundred miles in a single night just for a dinner and play date.
Happiness around the corner? Jump old sport, jump!
You can’t possibly still be afraid of the rattlesnake in the cage. What’s the worse thing that can happen?
We are headed fast for the dirt and decay anyways. Why not snap off a little happiness off on the toboggan ride down?
Oh wait. I know
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
That miserable fucker Hamlet. We all have more than a little smack of Hamlet in us as Coleridge put it.
Everybody loves Falstaff and prefers him. When Henry shouts at him: “Why, thou owest God a death.” Here is Falstaff’s reply
“Tis not due yet; I would be loath to pay him before
his day. What need I be so forward with him that
calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks
me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I
come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or
an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no.
Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is
honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what
is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?
he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no.
Doth he hear it? no. 'Tis insensible, then. Yea,
to the dead. But will it not live with the living?
no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore
I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so
ends my catechism.”
And here also ends mine: if you got to go – go out like Falstaff.
If?!?!?!?
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