The Last Momment

I've come to the conclusion that I like my movies humorous and my books tragic. If I'm in a mood to watch a movie its probably because all I want to do is relax and not think or ponder great ideas and concepts. When I read, though, I expect to be challenged. I want to come across something that makes me question things or see life in a different light. I find laughter in movies and myself in books.

That's how it seems to go. How it's always seemed to go.

I've been pondering my reading habits lately. Thinking over the things I like to read and why I read them. Wondering why I've become obsessed with John Green's books and why young adult lit seems to be my favorite lit.

After much thought I've come back to the answer I gave my World Literature professor at the beginning of the semester, when he asked the class what kind of readers we were. I had told him that I was a contemplative reader. That I liked reading things that dealt with the big questions in life. I don't necessarily like books that answer the big questions -those tend to be theology or philosophy books -but books that toy with them. After all, the big questions in life, the stuff that really matters, aren't easily answered. They're things we have to wrestle with. Things we have to reach our own conclusions on. We can do research and ask people, we can even be taught what to believe, but really it comes down to us finding those answers for ourselves.

What happens after death? Does God exist? Why is there so much suffering in the world? How do we overcome the suffering? What do we do when all hope is lost? How do we change our destiny? Does destiny exist? Is there a group of old lades planning out our every move? Our every kiss, tear, and laugh? What's the meaning of all this? What's the meaning of life? Why are we here?

There are so many big questions. So many thoughts and ideas we have to wrestle with and literature can be the ring we wrestle them in.

My newest obsession -my newest Big Question that I've been wrestling with -is the idea of the last moment. It's not really a question; more of a concept. Every single person on earth experiences the last moment. That is to say that before a person dies they must first go through their last moment of living.

It takes only a split second for a life to end. The human life is as fragile and fleeting as the flame of a candle. A simple burst of air and it's gone; poofed out. The Greek story teller, Home, once stated that, "Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed." It is mortality that makes the light that is our lives burn brightly. If we lived forever, if there was no death, where would the meaning be? What would be the point of existing?

We all expect to die, but some of us don't get the chance to die of natural causes. Whether you're murdered, killed in an accident, or suffering of an illness, whether you die of old age or because you've decided you no longer wish to live, there is still one last experience you have to go through. It is the last event every living person must experience. There is no getting out of it. And it is living the last moment you are alive.

I'm not obsessed with death. I'm obsessed with life before and after death. I'm obsessed with how death can take the burning light of a human life and smother it. I'm obsessed with the moments that death cuts short. I'm obsessed with mortality.

This last January, a girl at my university died. They say she was driving in a car with her brother when a truck hit them. This tragedy hit the heart of our campus heart. I never knew the girl, nto personally, but I had known of her and just that fact that a member of our beloved community was gone hurt. To think, to know, that a life so young was ended just like that...it was..I couldn't help but wonder where she and her brother were going. What they were doing.

I wondered if they were listening to music. Singing along to the radio. Maybe he was texting someone. Maybe she was talking about Christmas. Maybe they were discussing school or having one of those all so important sibling bonding moments.

Only a few months later, in March, I got a call from my dad saying that an elderly lady of our church had passed away. He told me that they (who I assume were the doctors or the people that found her) thought she died looking for something. That she appeared to be looking for something and that her heart just failed. That she died instantly. One second she was there and the next gone.

It makes one wonder, what will we be doing when we die? What moment of ours will be cut short? What moment will be our last?

We don't always know when we are experiencing our last moments. Sometimes we do. Some people stare death in the face knowing that in a few seconds he'll take them to eternity. Most don't though. The average person does not know when they are going to die.