Gripped

A black hand rests on the shoulder of the man in mid-life crisis as he desperately tries to hold at bay a dread that has been building in his aging years. He feels alive and young as he dates a woman half his age.

Another black hand grips a mother, as she feels a sense of insignificance from her household life. Her children strive for success, and forward motion in exciting strides – and every time they do, she feels a sense of threat accumulate within her, so she discourages them, distracts them, plays the victim, and entitles herself to their time and energy.

And yet another such hand finds a hold on a peace-loving person, who has determined that all things go the way of nature. They will accept everything that comes without a fight. All things are inevitable, and will be welcomed, so as not to strive so ardently.

For the brave the black hand creates a pursuit of altruistic cause – good ideals that are lived out in a pained existence that denies them their own human drives and amplifies unhealthy repression of desires and fears.

All of them are palmed by a reality they scantly understand controls their thoughts, their feelings, and eventually, their actions.

It reaches for everyone and eventually finds them without fail. People of entire cities, and nations each bear a hand of a hopeless end. Most do not see the appendage that hovers in subconsciousness. Various desires and cravings in life spring up to avoid those feelings, and many are summarily entertained. We cannot redeem time, so we must act now, and must act decisively, to obtain the things in life that make us feel as far away from acknowledging the black hand as possible. The pressure is immense.  It sways everyone in time, and creates havoc of the worst kind – from outright immorality and brutality to ruinous complacency and helplessness  – all to alleviate the current of dread in them they try so hard to stay in denial of (and very often succeed in doing!). People will do what it takes: gain riches at the cost of their decency, power at the cost of humility, or sex at the cost of fidelity.

As the anticipation of death sends out billions of limbs to all of humanity, it pushes and pulls the will of all, enslaving everyone as it does. We are all just getting older, with less time to exist, and much still to do.

The certainty of death authors fates, and by extension all manner of evil in the world. It is the merciless guarantor of evil and complacent motivations.

Many never know any better, or question sufficiently why they are unable to find an iron grip over their own desires without permission of the black hand.

For those with a conscience, the knowledge of the good we know we ought do, but find impossible to live out, makes it all the worse. The black hand continues its dictatorship despite consciousness of it, as those who see it realize they are powerless against it, and fall even further into its influence due to the realization of one’s own weakness in the face of it all. To fail against that which it dictates we do, is to find ourselves pulled into cycles of weakness and loss of dignity.

However, some of those who recognize their helpless plight, may find a faint realization that is pivotal in the true escape from the black hand: something else with billions of arms, for billions of people – a different kind of hand.

For the anticipation of what will end in death, can only be opposed with an anticipation for all that will end in fulfilled life.

And just as the black hand cows the mind into destructive fantasies and evils, the hand of light anticipates an endless life of fulfillment: one filled with never-ending personal value that transcends our present mortality.

Each hand tries to pry the other’s grip from human bodies and minds. Ultimately, in what often seems like stalemate, we are the tie breaker, that submits to either anticipation: that of death or that of life. From the contest between each form of anticipation all imaginings flow. It creates villains and heroes, and everything in-between.

And the arms of light require something we often cannot imagine: an ultimate- all encompassing good. A fabulously generous, kind, and righteous brilliance that actively steers people, reassures them, guides them into all hope, and to all good deeds. Without a sense of this certainty, anticipation of ultimate life is something out of reach. Realizing an endless promising future kills the dread of our expiration.

One cannot afford to believe in a good God that is not, at the very least, equal in its totality of goodness than death is in its absolute reign of despair. For if He is not totalitarian goodness, then the black hand will always trump the hand of light – and all mankind doomed to its endless rendition of chaotic life as black hands trounce the ones of light whenever they apply sufficient pressure.

No healthy faith exists apart from shameless audacity to believe in the totalitarian goodness of God – and when the black hand tries desperately to frame this hope as naïve, it must be violently refused. Wisdom is found in hoping in an eventuality that might disappoint, and foolishness found in accepting without protest the guarantee of death and its manipulative power over us.