Feeling Feelings

It's amazing how death of a friend brings about a break in the illusion known as reality. I have made assumptions about life, tomorrow, the future, and that is why I get up and do the things I do. As a kid, I never imagined how much of a long shot that is, literally. Cliches abound about death because it is a common occurrence, as is birth.

One of my classmates from the acting program I graduated from this spring, was killed due to being rear-ended by a drunk driver. Every time I reach down to reconcile that event intellectually with the emotional implications of it, I feel lost. My mind keeps coming up with explanations that seem reasonable, but death is unreasonable. It refuses that definition, so as a human I am left to simply feel it. It feels empty and full at the same time. It's the throbbing kind of pain experienced from the blow of a blunt object. Death is tactless. It's an inevitable loss that doesn't discriminate.

It's easy to imagine there is an Intelligent Designer when I watch the sunset cascading radiating sherbet hues over the terrain of mountains of earth and sky. But what about when someone I know and love dies from a collision with a motor vehicle? When a child is still-born? etc. Where is the Intelligent Designer then? It reminds of me of a book series I read as a kid. It's called Journeys to Fayrah by Bill Myers. In the second book, The Experiment, Meyers explores the paradigm of a creation given free will, even to the point of hurting itself, and a creator willing to give her creature that choice. It's a very emotional book. I cried when I read it. I recommend the series. It is creative, compelling, and symbolic.

Speaking of books and compelling stories, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, is one that  I haven't read. But I have seen the movie starring  Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort. A line in the movie, and in the book is "Pain demands to be felt." I believe this is a true statement. I am a human and I feel stuff. That stuff is my experience and I get to decide what I do with it. I choose to feel it.