Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Who are you? No, not your name. Who are YOU?

The progressive illness of my poodle, Lucky, has turned on the philosophical switch in my brain to questions that are inevitable to everyone. We grow up seeing people grieve and feel sorrow towards lost loved ones or pets and see those close to them putting an arm around their shoulder or giving them a hug in an attempt to comfort them, but how does one truley comfort someone about death? Do we just say "Theyre in a better place, with God and all the pretty angels" and call it a day? What if the individual with the lost loved one and the individual trying to comfort have conflicting after-life views? NOW what is there to say! I caught my mother crying this morning in the kitchen because Lucky had a stroke ad isnt doing very well in the vets, and all I could really find myself to do was hug her. I couldnt say it would be alright- because things certainly arent. I couldnt say that he'll be in a better place up in the sky with all the little pet angels- because its not a belief I hold naturally in my heart. My parents have always wondered and have been upset about why I don't believe in their God or any other compilation of "Gods", and its not that I don't believe in a God, it's just that I cant help but to step out of the box of views I was raised with and contemplate on everything else out there and the questions people refuse to confront for themselves sometimes as they mature. Why should I, or anyone else for that matter, settle for the religions they were raised with without questioning them? Why should we baptize babies at birth to a particular religion when they don't even know what their names are? If there is a God out there that created man, why is man punished for his sins if they are supposedly destined by God himself? Who are you? Who am I? I know I'm Jezzebell Vinuela, but who is that? Yeah I'm a girl that enjoys diverse music, sushi, and letting the good times roll but when we strip a human being of external influences, who are we left with? Something can't be made out of nothing, so that means God must have made everything, but then how was God brought about? Did he create himself out of nothing? I mean, he can't create himself before he had a "self" to create.. right? As we get older we find that we are no longer the speculating child watching someone comfort someone else for a lost loved one- we become the comforter and sometimes the sufferer, and its a much bigger aspect of our backbone than we think because it raises these inevitable questions of the natural and "supernatural" world. Introspection is my journey; who are we when we strip ourselves of our hobbies, our favorite foods, our favorite music, the views we were raised with, and everything else that superficially defines us- who are you left with?

"Those who are dead, are not dead, they're just living in my head.
Time is so short, and I'm sure, there must be something more."