During yesterday’s grueling 16-hour bout with abdominal pain (which I suspect is caused by gallstones), I was forced to give emphasis to my mortality once more. On my sickbed, I had creepy visions not only of death but also of what lies beyond it: the firmament, purgatory, the pits of hell, or probably sheer nothingness — the dead end of all reality. I tried to grasp if there ever really was a thin line between pleasure and pain, and what on earth was it really all about. In my delirium, I thought of people working hard just to spend thousands of cash to make themselves physically appealing to others, with all such activities proving worthless when one is already at the death throes. I thought of people (those who are privileged) who spend thousands or even millions just to fight off disease, only to die afterwards.
What’s that line again in Metallica’s “Fight Fire With Fire”? Oh yeah: “We all shall die”.
I often tell my wife that I am not afraid of death. With all the discomforts that I’ve been feeling and the continuous sorrow that I experience from time to time (the kind of sorrow that lingers like a vise-grip), I no longer am. What unnerves me, though, is the pain that comes right before it (blessed are those who died in their sleep). Even the very thought of it already depresses me. Here we all are, enjoying the finest/simplest things in life, but at the end of it all, those pesky mistresses of Death called Pain await us with seeming glee, fluttering above our dilapidated bodies like buzzing flies but with giant pitchforks ready to feast on the living wits out of us. Another Metallica line comes to mind: “We hunger to be alive”. Yet most of us don’t live for a higher purpose beyond the usual raising of families or just the sheer need to keep those eyes open to enjoy what there is to be enjoyed.
All this makes one ask the age-old question: what’s this life for, really?
That is why I have so much respect and admiration for those who were martyred in the name of faith: Peter the Apostle, Stephen the Protomartyr, Joan of Arc, etc. Even the Son of God had to humble Himself by becoming obedient to death (Philippians 2:8). They have mastered and conquered pain. Not that they did not suffer from it, but they had full grasp of what they were going through, AND that they had to go through it. Amidst the flames that engulfed them, the whippings they had suffered, the beatings, the stoning, and all kinds of cruelty that would have tamed even the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Eli Roth, there lies a blissful realization, but a realization that only the mind of a fervent faithful can comprehend.
I know that not all of us will become martyrs, but sooner or later, we will face pain, the inescapable precursor to death.
Are you ready for it?
EL FILIPINISMO 