God and the Anthill

Today is another Friday, the fifth one since Hyacinth died. I wonder how many Fridays will pass before I stop marking time in this manner, before and after the death of my beloved. Hyacinth’s death, the emotional aftermath and my need to carry on with life is producing subtle but very real changes in the way that I view the world. I am becoming a different person. Slowly, gradually, but surely I am morphing into someone else. A part of me wishes that the person I am becoming would have been here for Hyacinth. But such wishes are pointless. We can only be who we are at any point in time. Experience is the author of our personality. To expect to be the person you are becoming in advance is a little bit like reading the last chapter of a novel first. It just ruins the story, and makes little sense without the context, without the buildup of what comes before.

Life is much more than I thought it was when I read the earlier chapters with my beloved Hyacinth. At the same time, it is also much less. Seeing just how little it really is makes it all the larger. We are tiny, defenseless, impotent creatures in all the ways that really matter. God must laugh and shake his head while watching us. I wonder if he admires our brave but fool-hearty optimism about our ability to control the life that comes our way, or if he laughs at it. I imagine God watching me during Hyacinth’s last week. I wonder if he shed a single tear of sympathy for me. I wonder if he felt any compassion at all. I truly believed that I could do something to save her, to make her live forever. With enough money, with enough effort, with the right expert knowledge, with the most well-intentioned decisions – if only I could buy, beg, borrow or steal the necessary goods perhaps I could save her. If only I could do things the right way, if I could avoid making a mistake, then the novel wouldn’t end with the death of the maiden. The hero would save her.

God knew all along that I was wrong, dead wrong. God knows that heroes do not exist outside of good books. All the money in the world, all our best laid plans, all our hopes and wishes, even true love cannot triumph over the inevitable. Death cannot be mastered or controlled. During Hyacinth’s last week I agonized over the decisions that I needed to make. I thought if only I knew enough I could make a choice that would end her life when all the good days were gone and the bad days had yet to occur. I thought that I could find a point where suffering began and joy ended. But God and the Buddha are clearly in close consultation. They know, as I know now, that every day of our life includes both suffering and joy. There is no way to draw a line, even to protect an innocent and beloved poodle. It seems cruel, but a poodle is entitled no more compassion from life than that which is given to each of us. There is nothing more to buy, beg, borrow or steal. All we get is suffering and joy, in various proportions every day until the end. Life is small and fickle and very much outside of our control.

This is what makes it all the more precious. Because life is all that we really have it is, indeed, the only thing that matters. Our money cannot buy us even one extra day. Our intellect cannot plan it out or even make sense of it after the fact. Our love will not triumph. In the end we will get sick, suffer and die; and the end may be sooner rather than later. Regardless, the end will surely come before we choose. When I look at it now I can see that all we really have is the day we are given. The full realization of that fact is terrifying. It’s so terrifying that we scurry around like ants at a picnic trying to make sense of it all, trying to bring enough crumbs of food into our nest to weather the storm. We think that a nest full of crumbs will buy us control and security. We expend our effort gathering as many crumbs as we can, as if filling the nest will somehow make it immune from being stepped on. We can’t control the footsteps of God, so we collect our crumbs and pretend. When the nest is stepped upon, as it most certainly will be at some point in time, all we can do is mourn the death of the queen, move on and build another nest.

What gives life meaning if we are no more precious to God than a mound full of ants? I don’t really expect any compassion from God. I don’t really think he/she/it takes much interest in any of us if he/she/it even exists at all. We can only look to the other ants for meaning and for compassion. The ants are all of us, scurrying around to avoid the pain, deluding ourselves into the belief that if we only did the right thing we could change the way that life is. I only we did the right thing we could earn the compassion of God. But we are not important enough to God for that, we are only important enough to each other.

Our lack of importance is an awesome responsibility. If we can expect no compassion from God then it comes down to each of us to provide it for one another. The foot is always coming down on somebody’s anthill, and the ants are everywhere. They are wounded young men in Iraq. They are starving children in Darfur and disillusioned babushkas in Russia. They are monks in exile, Anna Nicole in her Fort Lauderdale hotel room, and a college professor weeping in her office five weeks after her poodle has died. They are each and every one of us, and there is nowhere to turn for comfort except to one another.

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