“So I had a kind of panic attack. You know, I hadn’t slept for days, I was having these wild mood swings, I wasn’t eating at all. I thought I was dying! I don’t even know what triggered it, maybe just stress.”
“Are you OK now? How are you feeling?”
“Yeah, fine now, thanks. But it was pretty bad. Now I know what “existential crisis” means! When you actually believe that death is happening, I mean, totally happening to you, in the most real, metaphysical sense, it’s extremely alarming, to say the least.”
“Hey, I don’t know if it will help, but I believe everyone goes through this, I mean, at some time in their life, their whole existence. Why do you think there’s so much that’s been written about this, in religion, philosophy? You’re not the only one.”
“Great! So it’s completely normal? I don’t think so. Haha. It’s the complete opposite of normal!”
“Believe it or not, it is normal. Everyone contemplates their own potential mortality. It’s not something anyone can avoid.”
“But you know, just a few years ago, I was very young, the future seemed… I wouldn’t say certain or assured but things seemed OK, you know? Maybe I thought I was indestructible.”
“Well, put it this way, you’re a real person, whatever you are made up of, whether it be matter or some immaterial mental substance, it can’t cease to exist. You can’t make something real become not real, something that exists not exist. Maybe that sentiment doesn’t deliver the reassurance of immortality and all that that word implies, but there you go…”
“So we live forever, but life may suck sometimes? What I was thinking at the time when I was having this panic attack, was that there was no God out there that could save me, you know, maybe it’s just me, I am all that I have, and I’m going down. But what you were saying… if there is no, like, total death, in any case, what room is there for immortality and what does that mean?”
“I think it means more than just living forever, in whatever shape or form. The word conveys a certain quality in living, in any case. The ancient Greek gods, if they existed, you know, they had their delicious nectar and ambrosia, their comfy homes probably, their fine dresses and what have you, all decked out in the finest raiment, no doubt! And you know, they didn’t really have to work…”
“Was the world really like that once?”
“Well I don’t know if it was in this world, if they even lived, or are still living in, maybe in an alternate dimension, I don’t know. You know, you have the believers in evolution that the Earth, in this dimension, is billions of years old perhaps and on the other side, you have the creationists saying it’s thousands of years old only. You want to know what I think? I think they both may be far too secure that the world, and the universe, and this even links back to your being scared of death, that everything is old and established now, by at least thousands of years, right? Well, it occurred to me, what if, speaking as someone who is at least mildly schizo at the best of times, what if the world, I mean Earth, is actually to some extent, in parts maybe, born out of a whole group schizophrenic hallucination, and that the universe is actually only, I don’t know, only like 440 years old, Earth really began in the 1800’s suddenly, and everyone is still really young? Of course, that’s just a theory, I could be completely delusional, but there it is. Maybe if someone really knew, they could tell me, it would be good to know.”
“Very, very young Earth theory. I’m just glad you didn’t say it began with my birth on Earth and you’re not real and I’m living in a solipsistic nightmare!”
“No. Definitely, you are not alone. I guarantee that.”
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