God, Why Me? Well… Why Not?
I believe in God, whatever the hell it might be. The supreme power. The true and only self-governing rule of law. I don't have a face for it. I don’t even have a name. Different peoples of the world refer to it by a different word. The Russians call it Bog, which in English stands for a swamp, goddamnit!
Religious doctrines have gone awry from the very outset. For them, it’s always been about religion, rather than God itself. Now science is probably the closest to knowing God than anything has ever been. I don’t understand why religion would be so freaked out by it. If God is in everything and everything is God, than science must be the ultimate study of it. Sure, it may not call it God. But, hey! It’s still work in progress. You can’t have a name for something you don’t yet know. Then again, religion, in most part, is all about freaking out anyway.
Science itself, however, having human intelligence as its backbone, is inherently flawed. This flaw must be the greatest blessing in disguise yet bestowed upon mankind for if the man ever figured out God he’d probably squeeze it out of its own black hole of the essence and screw it.
The first thing most of us say when the Almighty has brought misfortune upon us—whether it’s stepping in dog poo, losing a cell phone, getting flooded by Hurricane Sandy, or contracting a terminal disease—is: God, why me? I haven’t yet encountered a person who’d say the same thing after hitting the jackpot. No one ever wishes: “God, more than 7.5 million people in the world die from cancer each year. About 90,000 of them—children. Why not me?
”Your chances of getting struck by lightning is outrageously higher (1 in 700,000, according to National Geographic) then winning the Powerball jackpot (1 in 175,223,510). Somehow I still doubt to ever see you wake up in the morning longing for it to finally be the day you got electrocuted by Zeus.
Of all the animals on this planet, we humans are the only species with an enormous sense of entitlement. We take it granted that we can run down to a bodega and get a fresh–made meal in a matter of minutes after feeling hungry—something a lion (or our ancestors) would have to hunt for throughout a long cold night. We claim it our birthright to be pampered. We insist on being fed with a silver spoon. We demand rights over the fruits of someone else’s labor but take no responsibility for our own. We crap in the well we drink from and suppose it to always be clean. We bite the hand that feeds us and expect it to be there for us nevertheless. We are spoiled little brats of our solar system. Rotten imp heirs to the throne of the Kingdom of Earth. And we are running our kingdom to the ground.
We’ve all heard our good brothers and sisters call our attention to this problem. But let's think about who’s really endangered here?
Have you noticed how shipshape the wilderness is? You don’t have to go the Amazon rainforest to check it out. Just step outside the city where humans have little or no presence. Nothing there is out of place. Not a single rock, or a broken tree. Leaves fall, plants and animals grow and die, but it all remains perfectly neat. Each object belongs exactly where it is. It only gets messy when human traces start showing up. A plastic bottle. A disposable coffee cup. A torn up sneaker. That shiny pretty condom wrap (and don't even go looking for its used contents).
Save the Earth. Protect our planet. Who are we kidding! What exactly are we capable of saving here if not our butts? There’s no doomsday in the universe. Greenhouse effect. Global warming. Nuclear war. These things can do no harm to the world. We become too much of a mess and we’ll be wiped off of the face of the Earth. It might then take it a few million years, but nature will eventually clean itself up. Then all there’ll be left of us is a myth that future civilizations will look for in vain like we’ve been looking for Atlantis.
A friend—an avid gambler with no pretense of spirituality—once gave me an interesting insight into the ways of God. "Life", he said, "is like God's chess board. He never means to harm you, but plays the game so perfect, if you go against him, you're destined to be destroyed by your own virtue."
Karma is no supernatural concept. It's just a basic cause and effect theory. When we see a flower pot fall off a window sill, we know it’s going to hit the pavement. When it hits the pavement, we know, it will break. When it breaks, it'll spill its contents all over the brick road. Similarity, we know if we break into somebody's house we will pay the consequences. But we don't see what's coming if we kill a forest, or shatter somebody's heart. That's why we come up with a fancy word and hope it's just a fiction.
So what’s an impudent child to do when his mischief gets out of hand? He’s got to run and hide behind his parent’s back. That’s when God comes in, reinvented, redefined. Daddy Almighty. He’s gonna take care of us as long as we pray to him and ask for forgiveness. And if we whimper long enough, Daddy will make the mess clean itself up and disappear. We cling on to the idea of God because we are in constant need for someone to kiss our boo-boos away. Most people don't even understand what the hell they’re saying in their prayers. In that, they are no different from a monkey wearing glasses and pretending to be reading a newspaper.
We all do need a religion, of course. Just like we need to hold our parent’s hand. But at some point, we’ve got to let it go. Walk our independent path. Make our own mistakes. Fall flat on our asses and get back up again. What good is a life lived right if we are not the ones living it?
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.”
I would’ve been blessed to have met Jesus, Buddha, or Krishna in person. But I haven’t. Or, I have, but haven’t recognized them. One way or another, now I am on my own. I avoid everyone willing to preach me otherwise like anthrax. In the end, it doesn’t matter which imaginary friend is in your corner. You are all alone in the ring. And you better be winning, or all they’ll do is watch you get torn to shreds and won’t even throw in a towel.
But, wait a minute! God is good. God is kind. He has a bigger plan for you than you have for yourself. Right?
I don’t think so, my naive friend. I don’t believe God is kind. Not that it’s evil either. I doubt it hates you. I actually don’t suppose the human emotions apply here at all. It just doesn’t give a diddly squat about you. You mean no more to it that a rat means to a NYC Subway train. It won’t change its course, slow down, or stop for you. Cut its way off and it will run your ass over without even noticing it.
Jesus must have known this pretty well when he refused to cast himself down from a pinnacle of the temple.
“Thou shalt not test the Lord thy God.”
God created you. It set you in motion. Now, it’s your turn to stop clinging to the hem of its gown and let its will be done. Quit hoping God will live your life for you. As a matter of fact, erase the word hope from your dictionary altogether and start living a life of your own.
“We should not expect something for nothing—but we all do and call it Hope.”
Considering the sperm count and the resilience of the competition, the birth of every single individual in itself is an insurmountable success story, much greater than any other we’ve learned in the history of humanity. I don’t know what happens during those cozy last few months inside a womb, or while passing vagina, that turns most of us into Lance Armstongs. It seems as if all we learn since the day we’re born is how to lose. Even in learning, we are the slowest. An average two-year-old deer can outrun a full-grown tiger. A two-year-old human can’t even change her own diaper. So it’s not so much nature vs. nurture as nurture interfering with nature’s innate way of prevailing.
Yes, we might be on our own. But we are in a goddamn good place to be. God built this beautiful playground for us. Maybe now it’s time for us to quit crying over been abandoned, get our butts out of the sandbox, out of diapers, and go enjoy the rest of the place.
I know, it may feel insecure and unfair at times. Life—God, if you will—hardly ever is. But it doesn't seem to bother you much when it's to your benefit. Think fair the next time you put on those sexy leather boots your girlfriends go gaga about. Or when you sink your teeth into that luscious medium rare steak. I'm sure those animals didn't spend their short-lived lives dreaming about being on your feet, or in your stomach.
How many of us have actually contemplated the odds of being on a planet made habitable by a very precise coexistence of billions of variables that I have neither time nor scientific knowledge to fully list on this page? Here are just a select few:
Goldilocks Zone. A very narrow circumstellar strip in our solar system, a perfect distance from the Sun, sustaining temperatures not too hot to fry out precious little planet dry, and not too cold to turn it into an icicle. It is only here that liquid water—which keeps the Earth young, fresh, and healthy—can be preserved.
Size of the Sun. Had the Sun—just one of the infinite number of stars—been larger it would’ve burnt out too soon. And smaller, it would’ve been unable to keep a tight leash on the Earth and its brothers and sisters. Its size has enabled it to burn at a relatively steady temperature so as to keep baking our mother planet for us for more than 4.5 billion years before we showed up.
Size of the Earth. Again, a little bigger, and our planet would’ve been a gas giant. A bit smaller, and it would’ve been incapable of retaining the atmosphere.
The Moon. Perceived by many to be a giant dead rock flying over our heads for no reason or purpose whatsoever, our own tiny little dance partner waltzes around the Sun with us keeping the Earth’s balance. It is in a direct correlation to our weather and the ocean's tides. It balances our gravity. It stabilizes our planet's rotation, preventing drastic movements of the poles that could cause massive shifts in climate and trigger the doomsday. Without the Moon, the Earth would have been no Garden of Eden that it is now.
Jupiter. Our big brother (about 318 times larger than the Earth) protects us from a myriad of celestial bullies—life-destroying asteroids ranging from a size of a pickup truck to a size of our moon—by being the first one to take the hit.
Rotation speed of the Earth. Just the right velocity ensuring that the nights and days are not too long. You can get a glimpse of what it could be like if days and nights were longer by taking a look at the poles and the equator.
Atmosphere. It consists of about 20% oxygen making the air we breathe… well, breathable.
How’s that for a jackpot?
So, wash that frown off your face. Look up, down, left, right, or whichever way you please—there’s no specific direction for God—and be grateful for the winning combination of cards you’ve been handed. Leave the Daddy alone. Look into, explore, and discover yourself. That’s the only part of God within your reach. The only channel you've been given access to. And maybe, if you find yourself, you’ll have a crack at finding God.
“The distance between you and God is the same distance between you and yourself.”
Stop looking for an easy way out. The world isn't ending as quick and easy as you wish. Even when, in about six billion years, the Sun hits its expiration day, bloats and consumes the Earth and its siblings as its last supper, the life as we know it will have ended long before, slowly and painfully. But unless you’re planning to still be here for your one-millionth reincarnation, you have nothing to worry about.
The next time you step into dog poo, wipe off your feet. Move along. Smile. You haven't been singled out. It was just your turn.