A Different View Towards Death

Charmaine and Aunty Sarah just dropped us a surprise visit. They got back from Singapore last night. I must say it was good to see both of them again. I spoke to Aunty Sarah for a bit while Char and Sha (it's funny how Venetia, Charmaine and Jerusha can all rhyme: tia, char and sha) went to Sha's bedroom.

I read Audrey's blog a few days ago, and the contention in one of her post was that dating isn't as important as developing a wide and firm base of friends that you know you can trust. Lots of friends have popped by these holidays, and i find myself thanking God for them in my prayers, something which i've never done before.

I don't know, Aud. Would you rather have someone you can spend the rest of your life with or a bunch of good and trusty friends that you can only see several times a week?

One thing that strike me most is the "goodbye" that sparks the beginning of the end of every meeting. I hate that because it makes me feel like i'm losing something.

This feeling of uncertainty creeps over me because i don't know if we'll continue to be good friends the next time we meet. Or will something happen that turn the best of friends into eternal archrivals?? You can never know. You may be all happy and fine today, but sad and depressed the next.

I guess everyone longs for someone else that really ("really" isn't the right word, "geuine" suits my cause better) cares, loves them altruistically; someone whose love for you is unfaltering, unfailing. Someone who would still love you no matter how much you piss them off.

Graham Greene puts it this way:
"A chance of death? Why should i want to die when Phuong slept beside me every night? But i knew the answer to that question. From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet i had longed for it. Always i was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year, Phuong would leave me. If not next year, in three years. Death was the only absolute value in my world."


Here comes the astonishing part:
"Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable for the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift. I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity."


Someday i'll understand...