Inspirational Thought For the Day

Death, like so many good movies, is sad. The young often fancy themselves immune to death. And why shouldn't they? At times life can seem endless, filled with belly laughs and butterflies, passion and joy, and good, cold beer.

Of course with age comes the solemn understanding that forever is but a word. Seasons change, love withers, the good die young. These are hard truths, painful truths - inescapable but, we are told, necessary. Winter begets spring, night ushers in the dawn, and loss sows the seeds of renewal. It is, of course, easy to say these things, just as it is easy to, say, watch a lot of television. But, easy or not, we rely on such sentiment. To do otherwise would be to jump without hope into a black hole, an endless abyss, falling through an all-enveloping void for all eternity. Really, what's to gain from saying that the night only grows darker and that hope lies crushed under the jackboots of the wicked? Who benefits from the knowledge that when a horse dies, it doesn't go to some blissful bluegrass pasture in the sky but is instead chopped into tiny pieces, some of which are made into glue? What answers do we have when we arrive at the irreducible realization that there is no salvation in this life, that sooner or later, despite our best hopes and most ardent dreams, no matter our good deeds and truest virtues, no matter how much we work toward our varied ideals of immortality, inevitably the seas will boil, evil will run roughshod over the Earth, and the planet will be left a playground in ruins, fit only for cockroaches and vermin.

There is a saying favored by clergymen and aging ballplayers: Pray for rain.

But why pray for rain when it's raining hot, poisoned blood?