2/11/01 - Well, tonight has certainly been an interesting evening. Have you ever had a night where you are alone no matter how many people surround you? Well, I spent most of the night out at bars (no, I haven't gotten back to drinking yet), but I was off in my own little world most of the night. I've apparently had a couple of breakthroughs in the friendship department while taking a couple of steps backward into the past. All at the same time. It's an odd feeling to be drawn backwards while moving forward. Unique, to say the least.
Anyways, my friend brought up a theory of his tonight: we are in hell. His thoughts on this were discussed in great detail over Coke and whiskey sours, but basically, this was the idea: hope is torture. We are given mortality, and the rules are set in opposite (see Devil's Advocate) due to the fact we are in hell. We have the eternal hope that someday, we are going to a better place, be it heaven or whatever afterlife you apply to. We have the hope that we hope that we're going to be the ones to own the big house and drive the big car. We have the hope that we are the ones who are going to meet the perfect man/woman. We always have hope, and that is our damnation and torture all at once. His thoughts were once people came to realize the inconsequential nature of existence, we would truly be free. I told him if that were the case, Buddhists should have acheived that.
He had an explanation for this, too. He thought it true that every religion had gotten some piece of the puzzle right, but for the wrong reasons. Like Buddhists had the "desireless" point correct. Christians had the "heaven" part right. Just no one had put together that this might be hell, and through reincarnation it is eternal. Our torture is that we have the hope we will see heaven. "How come heaven has no description?" he asked me. Of course I gave him the standard none-response due to a lack of knowing. "Because you will never see it." That was his reasoning. Whatever you had done to be discarded to hell didn't matter, because you wouldn't see the "heaven" that remains so mysterious. It's kind of odd, he mentioned the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. In a way, it does. Just a thought, though, that will be passed on by the morrow.
I don't have the energy to write his whole arguement down, but that was the gist of it. Those were the main points. Well, despite all this, I will hang on to my hope. I have no religion I prescribe to, no firm beliefs in theology. I just hope he's wrong. That is my torture.
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