To Die For

I’ve heard it said that until you have something worth dying for, you aren’t really living. Perhaps that explains why some things are the way they are these days.

Daily life in America has become a game of cat and mouse. We play the cat and, just like Tom and Jerry, occupy our time chasing little things that so often evade us. If we think about any kind of purpose in life, many times we look at the trivialities that we chase and think that our pursuit puts a point to our lives.

Yet what does it mean to have something to die for?

What could the Kamikaze fighters in World War II have had that would make them give up their lives in what we today see as a foolish, wasted, futile effort? What is it that gives Muslim suicide bombers the determination to turn themselves into a walking Claymore mine? What made a group of rebels in the 1770’s take up a seemingly suicidal fight against one of the greatest military powers of the time? What could have caused Christians of the first generation to allow themselves to be tortured and butchered, rather than to deny Christ?

I’ll admit that it’s rather hard for me to grasp that whole concept. A decade and a half of depression has left me with a bit of a fog over my view of things. Life isn’t exactly something I cherish, and yet something makes me go on.

And looking back at people through the ages who have given their lives for something or someone is a bit fascinating to me. It’s not something that I can say that I’d do if I was in a position to, yet I can’t say I wouldn’t. Maybe I’ve just seen too many movies, but it seems that being faced with death tends to show what a person is truly made of.

I really have no clue what I’m made of.

If a person has something or someone they’re willing to die for, does that mean that they also have something or someone to live for? Does that add a whole new facet to their existence that everyone else is missing?

American society seems to have a tiny grasp on that. Yet Americans like to have their sterile, comfortable, predictable lives. Instead of taking chances and actually putting something real on the line, we watch someone else do it on TV or on a movie screen.

There are certainly exceptions to every generalization, but America is a nation of zombies. We live how people on screens and magazines tell us to because they supposedly know more than us. We do what is expected of us to be productive members of society. We seek out friends and families. We look to education and knowledge for answers to our questions, and as a way to reach some better quality of life.

We are allegedly a free nation, yet is this a freedom people would die for?

I think the attacks on 9/11 proved that it isn’t. Instead of facing up to people who seek to kill us, the first thing people did was to try and find ways of making things “safer and more secure” which was done by taking away freedoms and rights. True, it could be argued that the “freedom” to take anything you want on an airplane is trivial and rather stupid to begin with, but it’s something people were willing to trade for the illusion of safety.

I really have no idea where I’m going with this.

In a way it seems like I’m a moth and the idea of having something or someone worth dying for (and living for) is a flame that draws me like a magnet. Perhaps I’ve just spent so much of my life in a dark hole, willing to throw my life away for nothing, that I’d like to have something worthwhile.

All I really have is questions, and I don’t know where to look for answers. Maybe someday I’ll find them.

*
“Hey, I ain’t ever coming home
Hey, I’ll just wander down my road
Hey, I can’t meet you here tomorrow
Say goodbye, don’t follow
Misery so hollow
*
Forgot my woman, lost my friends
Things I’d done and where I’ve been
Sleep in sweat, the mirrors cold
See my face it’s growing old
Scared to death no reason why
Do whatever to get me by
Think about the things I said
Read the page it’s cold and dead
*
Take me home.”
*
Alice In Chains