TheBearJew
06-03-2010, 06:40 PM
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People often laugh at my response after asking me what I do. They frown. Awkwardly smile. Slightly raise their eyebrows. Oh, they say, the word lingering on their tongues far too long. Thusly they intend to portray their discomfort having de-legitimatized my life’s goals with their chuckles and snorts.
I tell them: I began searching for heaven on my fourteenth birthday.
Then, most of them leave. Their departure is delayed, so as not to come off as rude, but from thus point onwards, all of their actions are simply means to an end of our conversation. All the while they nod their heads to demonstrate their absolutely genuine interest. Ah, really? they say, fascinating. Tell me more. And the inevitable: Oh wait, I must be going; the time, my stop, bathroom. But they always leave, the conventional thinkers. But there are the few that stay. They too find my occupation peculiar, but that it piques their interest enough that they push their doubts of my mental state aside.
They seek clarification as to what the hell I was getting on about. Searching for heaven, they think. What the hell does that mean? All this assuming they’ve misheard, or that heaven was a metaphor of sorts. Quite the contrary.
It’s rare that anyone stays past that point. But, those that do are highly intrigued by my pursuit of heaven. They usually do whatever they can to keep me around to tell them stories about myself and my quest. I savor the rare admiration, and happily oblige to sit and chat. Don’t be fooled; I am not seeking confirmation. Still, it’s quite nice to be treated as normal once in a while. Or at least interesting.
A man and his daughter sat next to me on a particularly long train ride. We got to talking, as people do when stuck with each other for extended periods of time, and he asked me what I do for a living.
His daughter was entranced by my unwavering faith, and hung on to my every word. Her eyes lit up as I spoke, and delivered her a gift she had never thought possible. Here was an adult arguing against realism and for fantasy. For her, I was proof that her dreams and hopes weren’t child’s play. Proof that the fantastic is as realistic as the ground we walk on.
Her father, however, didn’t take to me as she did. He was shocked by my apparent naivety. “Don’t you realize that you’ll never succeed?”
He asked me this as I was walking away from the train at the last station. He had already missed his stop, so disrupted by my being that he couldn’t bear getting off without trying to convert me to his thoughts, convinced that a little more effort or clarity in his argument and he’d have me. He shouted, his voice strained by desperation.
I stopped for a second and turned around, knowing he needed, for his own sake, one last shot to persuade me.
“Don’t you get it? You’ll never find heaven. It doesn’t exist; it’s a story we tell children when their dog dies to ease our ears of their sobbing. It’s a myth we tell ourselves to purge our minds of fear of everything simply ending. A euphemism. Can’t you see that which is so clear?”
A blind man could see the fear in his eyes. “You’re right,” I said, turning away.
Though he attempted to suppress it, one could see the triumphant delight in the blushing of his ears and the edges of his frown. He mumbled something, and with a pat on his daughters’ back, to summon her to follow, he turned to continue on with his daily affairs.
I was still smiling. But as I turned away to leave, I could still feel his daughters’ glare on my back. I turned my head back, meeting her eyes, and with a pursing of my lips and a sad nod of the head, I apologized. I had led her on and betrayed her, this we both knew. She had come to count on me to stand up to her father, providing undeniable evidence proving heavens’ existence. She furrowed her brows, and turned to leave with her father. I hoped that one day, she’d remember her fathers’ frown, and my smile, and understand.
I was 14 when I began searching for heaven.
People often laugh at my response after asking me what I do. They frown. Awkwardly smile. Slightly raise their eyebrows. Oh, they say, the word lingering on their tongues far too long. Thusly they intend to portray their discomfort having de-legitimatized my life’s goals with their chuckles and snorts.
I tell them: I began searching for heaven on my fourteenth birthday.
Then, most of them leave. Their departure is delayed, so as not to come off as rude, but from thus point onwards, all of their actions are simply means to an end of our conversation. All the while they nod their heads to demonstrate their absolutely genuine interest. Ah, really? they say, fascinating. Tell me more. And the inevitable: Oh wait, I must be going; the time, my stop, bathroom. But they always leave, the conventional thinkers. But there are the few that stay. They too find my occupation peculiar, but that it piques their interest enough that they push their doubts of my mental state aside.
They seek clarification as to what the hell I was getting on about. Searching for heaven, they think. What the hell does that mean? All this assuming they’ve misheard, or that heaven was a metaphor of sorts. Quite the contrary.
It’s rare that anyone stays past that point. But, those that do are highly intrigued by my pursuit of heaven. They usually do whatever they can to keep me around to tell them stories about myself and my quest. I savor the rare admiration, and happily oblige to sit and chat. Don’t be fooled; I am not seeking confirmation. Still, it’s quite nice to be treated as normal once in a while. Or at least interesting.
A man and his daughter sat next to me on a particularly long train ride. We got to talking, as people do when stuck with each other for extended periods of time, and he asked me what I do for a living.
His daughter was entranced by my unwavering faith, and hung on to my every word. Her eyes lit up as I spoke, and delivered her a gift she had never thought possible. Here was an adult arguing against realism and for fantasy. For her, I was proof that her dreams and hopes weren’t child’s play. Proof that the fantastic is as realistic as the ground we walk on.
Her father, however, didn’t take to me as she did. He was shocked by my apparent naivety. “Don’t you realize that you’ll never succeed?”
He asked me this as I was walking away from the train at the last station. He had already missed his stop, so disrupted by my being that he couldn’t bear getting off without trying to convert me to his thoughts, convinced that a little more effort or clarity in his argument and he’d have me. He shouted, his voice strained by desperation.
I stopped for a second and turned around, knowing he needed, for his own sake, one last shot to persuade me.
“Don’t you get it? You’ll never find heaven. It doesn’t exist; it’s a story we tell children when their dog dies to ease our ears of their sobbing. It’s a myth we tell ourselves to purge our minds of fear of everything simply ending. A euphemism. Can’t you see that which is so clear?”
A blind man could see the fear in his eyes. “You’re right,” I said, turning away.
Though he attempted to suppress it, one could see the triumphant delight in the blushing of his ears and the edges of his frown. He mumbled something, and with a pat on his daughters’ back, to summon her to follow, he turned to continue on with his daily affairs.
I was still smiling. But as I turned away to leave, I could still feel his daughters’ glare on my back. I turned my head back, meeting her eyes, and with a pursing of my lips and a sad nod of the head, I apologized. I had led her on and betrayed her, this we both knew. She had come to count on me to stand up to her father, providing undeniable evidence proving heavens’ existence. She furrowed her brows, and turned to leave with her father. I hoped that one day, she’d remember her fathers’ frown, and my smile, and understand.
I was 14 when I began searching for heaven.