bed time

Listening to: Madonna - Die Another Day

I read this earlier today in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and it really stood out to me. I read it over three or four times:

"Ursula wondered if it was not preferable to lie down once and for all in her grave and let them throw the earth over her, and she asked God, without fear, if he really believed that people were made of iron in order to bear so many troubles and mortifications"

I'm not sure why it was so distinct to me, because this isn't a point in my life when I really feel like I'm suffering a lot, or a time that I'm really aware of how other people are suffering. Perhaps it just hit me as being true in some way, that that describes what human existence is, or at least part of it: that death is an answer to life because it signifies the end of life's persistent suffering and problems. Maybe it's just true because I have felt that desire to lie down and be done with life and done with suffering, though I feel silly saying that because I don't feel that the extent of suffering in my life is even comparable to what so many others have been through.

Which is one part of Christianity that I've been pondering recently: how we view death. Maybe my thoughts can be summed up in a question at the heart of Murakami's Norwegian Wood: is death the opposite of life? Christians speak of Jesus conquering death, and this seems very beautiful, but death itself seems beautiful to me too, and a natural part of life. Maybe what we're speaking of is that Jesus abolished death's terrors (since death is still present), and do look forward to a time when things will no longer die. The irony of this is that it's impossible for me to seriously imagine a life without death because currently, existence depends on death: the death and reproduction of cells in our own bodies and the death of everything we eat.

Sometimes I wonder what it is that is universal about human experience, what is the common bond of humanity. Often times, I think of loneliness and ignorance. Loneliness in the sense that no matter how close we are to our closest friends, lovers, acquaintances, there is and will always be a divide that prevents absolute understanding. Ignorance in the sense that humans constantly have to operate and act based on incomplete knowledge and uncertain consequences. Maybe uncertainty would be a better way of describing it than ignorance. But I suspect that suffering is another common bond of human experience.

Sometimes I think about this in the context of Jesus, that Jesus becoming human meant that he entered a life of loneliness and ignorance and uncertainty and suffering. Other times I just think the list I've acquired is true, but very sad, very dark, a bleak description of human life.