Say it with me: Spoooooooon, spooooooon

A group of work colleagues and I were discussing a strange and wonderful thing this morning. It's something that each of us has experienced, but no one could think of whether it has a name or not.

I kinda hope it doesn't have a name. It shouldn't have a name.

We were discussing what happens sometimes when you repeat a particular word a number of times and how it becomes meaningless; nothing more than a grouping of random letters.

It usually happens with an everyday, ordinary word. Take 'spoon'. You say it enough times and it starts to sound funny.

It's a quirky little phenomenon and it always makes me laugh when it happens.

Believing, as I do, that life is random and that there is no vast guiding hand at the controls of the rock on which we spin, when I experience those tiny moments where my brain loses all personal connection to a word that had previously meant something, it reinforces my view that everything on this planet has meaning only because we have chosen to give it.

A very good friend of mine who is a staunch believer in God is terrified by the idea that there could be no ultimate meaning in this world. To think we are alone and adrift is intolerable to her.

I feel the exact opposite.

How does one find comfort in the idea that a god, with some mysterious "plan" that he's not sharing with any of us, is orchestrating events in our universe? Sitting on his cloud, one hand on his chin judgementally, the other hand pointing out who shall live and who shall die, what village shall be obliterated with a mud slide, what town shall be bathed in 70 degree sunshine.

In my eyes, it's better to be powerless under the arbitrary, callous laws of nature than powerless under an easily-offended god prone to mood swings (after all, even He admits he's jealous, angry, & vengeful, as well as loving and merciful..).

Is it really so scary to think we're alone? That when we die, we simply fade to black? And a bonus question just because I feel like it: Are we really so infantile that we need the threat of eternal punishment or the promise of reward from a father figure to stop us from being uncool to each other and other living creatures?

We are given a few short years to spend here, and when we die, the spark in our eyes is snuffed out, our bodies disintegrate, and all of our molecules disperse far and wide and eventually become a part of new stuff.

Just like the stars that are born and burn brightly until they die, or a mountain that slowly forms and slowly crumbles, we are simply another form of matter and energy on a planet that hums with random, chaotic movement.

It's amazing and beautiful that we and everything we see and touch exists at all. It seems rather selfish to insist that it has to mean something, as well.

We human beings like neat, tidy happy endings, though. But since they hardly ever occur in life, why would we think they occur in death?