"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes.'"
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
Out of decent courtesy, I informed the church that I'd be back early. Only because *accountability* and the fact that they've been praying for me all this time. I woke up to many messages from concerned adults, telling me to trust God and have faith. I can tell they are worried. When they send me bible verses and pray for me over text, I know it is more for their own peace than my sake. And I'm grateful. But I don't worry. Have I always felt this way? I think so. I complain about pain and asking God how long more I have to suffer, but then I never really worry. Not only because He is the author of my life, the only giver and taker of life, or that in life and death He is sovereign and my soul is in His hand. I never worry, and today I realised this when re-reading Slaughterhouse-Five; everything is predestined.
We used to have very long arguments about predestination and freewill in youth, but I believe in predestination as in the day you were born and the day you die have all been marked down before you were even woven in your mother's womb. I told R the same thing when he was clearly upset. Look both ways before you cross the road but don't be too scared to live. Don't be stupid and constantly put your life at risk, but don't worry about when you will die. People can go to sleep and not wake up the next day. They could be involved in a freak accident that would have their loved ones ask, if only ONE thing was different that day, the chain of events would not lead him to being at the exact place and exact time he was killed. You never know. You just never know.
People involved in accidents would always ask, what if I had woken up 10 minutes later? What if I had taken a cab instead of a bus? What if I had stopped to get coffee instead of rushing to school? If it's your time to go, it is your time to go. Nothing can take it away and nothing can save you. Does this make me a fatalist? One uncle in church would say that I am, he even told me not to be one. But I'm not a fatalist. I just know when to let go. Why worry over something you have no control over?
Human beings are the only creatures bound by time. But in line of eternity, time is nothing. We see and experience things in a linear dimension. But things in the past, the present, and the future, are where they are and they are all here and not here at the same time. God exists outside our linear timeline. The past, the present, the future, is all in the now. He sees it all the same. Our souls exist outside a linear timeline as well. In our earthly bodies, our souls are forced to go through the motions and experience time as it is. But our souls exist before and after our bodies. There really is no use worrying over when these bodies would expire. Everything is temporary anyway. Take what we can get and make the best of it.
Today I am reminded of why KV is my favourite author of all time. Sorry, vanillabean.