I

Two million years ago I was living in the open grasslands of Kenya, making stone tools and eating zebras. Then, the next thing I know I'm a Druid priest living in Wales in 57 AD. and the Romans say they are disgusted by me. Okay, the magic and soothsaying are bad enough, but they are horrified about us sacrificing criminals and war prisoners. Okay, I get it. Our women served in the military, which really freaked the Roman soldiers out as well. We stood there, in the Menai Straits, ready to defend our country, and we were promptly massacred. Yes, I know, bad ending.

At 210 million years ago I was a morganucodon, and most people would insist I was a shrew. Little did I know that one day my ancestors would be humans, and fighting over parking spaces at a mall. My life was good. I just sat around and ate beetles all day, and had no idea that one day they'd be bringing drugs and long hair to America.

Now, the year is 2020 and I've reincarnated again to a 59-year-old American male with a weird sense of humor. The virus has come to reteach us the meaning of life and the Christians scream, "God answers prayers," when people recover. But the people piled high in refrigerated trucks, outside New York hospitals, are the examples of unanswered prayers. For I did pray for them, uttering deep into the night, and all alone.

Who Are You?

I want to poke holes in the bubbles, where everyone lives. I want to tear down the walls that divide us, but I can't. Sooner or later, something has to give. We can't go on like this. There are minds out there that won't open. I'm suppose to talk about life, and all I see is death and strife.

I look into the eyes of people who cannot see and I listen to their cries. But they don't listen to what I have to say. I only ask how we can keep living in a constant state of crises and conflict. If something doesn't change we will crack.

The ignorance betrays the weakness and the pride covers up the sickness. I see a world of zombies who cry into the night. We won't be here forever, and I try to be the voice of reason and I scream, "How can we end this?" But it just goes on and on.

The pride needs to go, and so do the weapons and defenses. We must be humble, like the example set by Jesus. We must learn to listen to see the other side, for once. No one owns "the one right way." We must relearn how we think.

The Transformation

Maybe the "school of hard knocks" is the only way we can learn, but the Spanish Flu and Black Death taught us little, other than to avoid the sick and dying. So, we leave them to die alone, lest we join them.

It all may seen unfair, but life is all about struggle. The idea is to climb Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. But I am stuck at level one and stay in basic survival mode. My greatest concerns are food, shelter, and heat. There was a time when I was near the top of Maslow's pyramid, which is self-actualization. That's the level of enlightened maturity where we have reached our goals, accept ourselves, and are able to self-assess in a realistic and positive way. But life had different things in mind, and I went back to the bottom. But at the bottom I am grateful for every meal I have and I'm thankful every time the furnace turns on because if it breaks I can't afford to fix it.

So, you're telling me I'm suppose to learn something from this? I'm a shrew, an East African plains ape, and a Druid priest, all rolled into one. What am I suppose to learn? I have only learned that we are a part of this world and not above it. I learned that to live a good life is to respect nature, wildlife, and each other. If you save the life of an insect that means far more to me than the value of your car. Those who do harm to this world are my enemies. Trump has rolled back protections on the environment and wildlife so that rich corporations can get richer. He is my greatest enemy of all, and when people say Trump is "anointed by God" I question that. And I question the people who say it.

If there is a "transformation" in my life, I can only say that it's a renewed appreciation for the little things — the taste of food, the smells of nature, flowers, and trees. I won't spend any more time listening to a pastor give their "do more, give more" sermons. I am now free.

I have fallen in love enough times to know that love is vain. It's an illusion because what we love is what we want to love, and not who the other person is. And we mirror who we are and what we want on others, until we become lost in our own delusions.

Humanity should have booted religion when we invented science in the 1450s. But we were too much in love with the things we thought gave us comfort. We went through the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment while still clinging to the imaginary voices in our heads. The great thinkers of the Enlightenment taught us about deism, where God exists, but doesn't actually interact supernaturally with the universe. So what's the point?

When I was doing landscaping yesterday I came across a perfectly smooth and oval rock. Now, if God were to have made the entire world in a day He would have had to consciously plan for that one little rock to be in that one patch of ground, and in that shape. He would have had to think out every rock before doing his famous genie blink. The Real Christians believe that God put the rock there, and for denying that I am an apostate, heretic, and scoffer. But I know that the rock became smooth from hundreds of years of sitting in a creek bed, and years of water running over it, to make it smooth. And how it ended up hundreds of feet from the nearest creek, I do not know. I will guess that some boys found it in the 1930s while playing in the creek, and they dropped it there. And that is it.

What's Next From Here

I wake up every morning in a daze. Am I depressed, scared, or just trying to suppress rage? My insurance company provides free video counseling, and the Indian woman on the screen tells me I'm okay. But the demons inside me disagree, and they constantly obliterate me, disintegrate me, and annihilate me. I want to break down, but there's no one around to care. Falling in love now means falling apart.

So, I get out of bed and join the rat race. Obviously I must change things because there's something I must be missing. I tell everyone I'm "great," because I know no one really cares. It's my last sardonic sarcasm as I pilot my sinking ship. I want to feel pain just so that I can feel again.

You tell me to pray to a God that even you don't believe in because if you did you would actually follow his teachings. You tell me to find truth in the lost and found. And as the bodies pile up I can only ask, where is your God now?

Inspired by the songs "Right Now," from Fire from the Gods, with lyric writers Erik Ron, Richard Markus Wicander, and Akil Jelani Channer; and from the song "Popular Monster," from Falling in Reverse, and lyric writer Ronald Radke.

Source:
The Death of the Druids, Phil Carradice, BBC


  Photo: Jakob Owens