Unwanted Life

Waylon and I went to the mall this weekend. And we ended up going to the Decatur mall, which has a good few stores, but one of my favorite stores to go to is the pet store. Yes the mall has a pet store. And so every time Waylon and I go to this mall we always end up going to see the puppies. We have come very close to actually buying a puppy a few times.

The reason why I love this store is because I love dogs. I love playing with dogs and snuggling with dogs and just being around them. But it seems that more and more that I visit this store I walk away more sad. Simply because there is so much unwanted life in this world.

It's interesting how we glorify death. How we watch it on the movie screen, how we read about it in the newspaper and in our favorite novels, how we scatter it all over our lives. We tend to believe that the only best movies have a death scene of some kind, whether it involves explosions or shooting or the last breath of someone of old age it seems to be the only way that a movie seems to be good, or real, or deep.

While we are so obsessed with this reality of death we seem to reject the unwanted life that is all around us. The fascinating thing is that we are such an individualistic society that we easily say, "Everyone for themselves." So we build walls out of sarcasm, cynicism, pride, intelligence, anger, or even our ability to be the victim for everyone else. We build these walls so that we can keep people out. We build these walls with the mortar of self and the brick of pride so that the life that is around us can not get in through the cracks.

Then when death strikes we build windows in our walls and we view the person as an exaggerated version of themselves. We dress them up or dress them down and throw them against the cruxifiction of introspection in our own lives. We are like the way we are because they did this or didn't do that. But we wouldn't ever try and approach them while they were living.

We would never tell them how we really feel why they were sitting next to us at dinner on Tuesday night.

Just like we don't talk about that relative who has a bastard child, because it would just cost to much. It would cost too much to tear that wall down. Or we don't try and get involved with our neighbor who just got a divorce because her husband was having an affair. It's just easier to hear about it from everyone else. Maybe even that regretted one night stand that has left us with the decision whether or not to keep the baby. We get lost in the words and the seemingly cheap whore that is represented as our relationship with people.

All this unwanted life seems to seep through sometimes doesn't it? This unwanted life that we have tried so hard to avoid our whole entire life. But, what if we are missing the point? What if instead of glorifying death we start glorifying life? What would happen if we didn't look forward for the hero to bust a cap in the bad guy, but instead we watched for the simple life that deepens these characters.

Yes, I know death is inevitable. But why wait to start grasping at the life around you after death has sunk in?