Anger management

I’m sad. And I’m angry. At myself, and at God, or the Universe or something.

I have a wonderful life. I have a wife who I love and who loves me. We have enough money to meet our needs and many of our desires—certainly the important ones. We have kids and grandkids who are doing well. I have no “objective” reason to be sad or angry. And yet, I am.

It’s not that I’m not perfect. I don’t expect to be perfect. But I expect to be “better” than I am, and I’m not, of course. No one can be better than they are.

But it’s not that. I can accept that I’m only as good as I am. What I can’t accept is that I don’t think I’m improving. In fact, there’s clear evidence that I’m getting worse. Older. Older can be good, but it’s generally worse. The body gets weaker. It has more pain. Memory gets worse. There are things that I do that I think will forestall some of this, but I’m unsatisfied with the result.

Of course, as the Buddha says, life is unsatisfactory. So why should this be any different?

Logically, it “shouldn’t” It “should” be what’s expected and normal. But it’s not.

I’m sad. And angry.

Evolution—or God, take your pick—has made me what I am. And Evolution—or God—has fucked up. And I’m angry at Evolution—or God—for that.

“Why blame me?” says Evolution. “It’s not as though I made you this way on purpose. I don’t do anything on purpose. I just follow the Algorithm: replication with variation and selection. Whatever comes of that is what comes of that. Not my fault.”

“Aren’t you going to take responsibility for anything?” I ask.

“Nope,” says Evolution. “Replication. Variation. Selection. I take responsibility for doing that. If I stopped replicating, or varying, or selecting, you’d have grounds for complaint. But I’m doing my job. What happens as a result is not under my control. It might be the result of Random Activity. The Initial Conditions of the Universe might determine it. But that’s beyond my pay grade. I just do my job.”

“Then who is to blame?” I ask.

“Not me,” says Evolution. “Try God. Maybe God is responsible for Random Activity or the Initial Conditions of the Universe.”

“God doesn’t talk to me,” I said.

“Yes, I do,” God said.

I sighed. “I know,” I said. “Or at least I know that something claiming to be God talks to me. Maybe you’re not God. Probably not since I mostly believe that God doesn’t exist. And if God existed, I’m not sure that He or She would talk to me.”

“Does it matter?” God asked. “I am what I am. Maybe I’m God. Maybe I’m not. Does it matter?”

“It might,” I said.

“When?” Asked God.

“It would matter if I wanted something from you,” I said.

“What if you wanted something. How would it matter?”

“If you were God,” I said, “you could do anything.”

“Wrong,” God said, “I could do anything that I wanted to do. Right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well,” God said, “The fact is that I also can do anything that I want to do. I just don’t necessarily do what you want. You want a miracle, right?”

“A miracle would be nice,” I said.

“Fine,” God said. “I just caused something that anyone who was counting would say was a miracle.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“Ahh,” said God. “I was willing to perform a miracle, but I’m not willing to tell you what it was.”

“Then how can I believe it’s a miracle?” I asked.

“Same way as you believe anything else,” God said. “You just believe it. People say ‘seeing is believing,’ but that’s wrong. People see things and don’t believe what they’ve seen. And they believe things that they’ve never seen. For example, China. Do you believe there’s such a place as China.”

“I see where you’re going,” I said. “Or at least I think I see.”

I thought I saw. Whatever it was that I was ‘conversing’ with—whether a partition of my mind or something else—had the epistemic high ground. It might or might not be what it said it was, but there was no way to prove or disprove its assertions. If it said it was God and—importantly—if there were a God—then it might be God. It was highly unlikely that there was a God, and if there were one, it was unlikely that God was speaking to me through this medium, but not impossible.

“That which is not impossible is therefore possible,” said God. “And sometimes it’s inevitable.”

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