Living Longer and Stronger

More than once I’ve come across articles that suggest that people with spiritual convictions live longer than those that don’t, but I never gave it much thought. After all it is a hard thing to prove and not all theories, though intensively researched and polled and counted hold water for long. Biases of the researchers sneak in. Politics lends a hand. And of course society can adopt crazy notions when ‘flock mentality’ rather than ‘independent thinking’ kicks in.

But as to the longevity theory that connects to spiritual beliefs, it seems to make sense. Obviously when people are of a positive mind, that is good.

Now the reason I mention this is because yesterday I wrote a blog. The subject was so difficult. So layered. So hard to bring to surface.

I spent hours manipulating phrases and words to find easily understood clarity. But what kept happening, in my frustration, was notions stealthily coupled on paper when my intent was for them to resist, and showed opposition when I wanted them to fuse. Hours later, exhausted from my attempts to deal with words that were acting like a throng of misbehaving kids, I felt I was finally making headway.

And then, without warning, my screen froze up. But this old lap top is usually pretty dependable though it has its quirks. I pushed ‘ctrl’ and ‘delete’ and shut down my computer. I again started it up and it did what it always does, with such prompt surety. When I went back to my text program, the words I had written came up on the screen as if nothing had happened.

A quick review of what I had written and immediately I was again so embroiled in the subject matter that it never occurred to me to hit ‘Save’. So more work, more struggle. Now the thing is really taking shape. But then, it happened once again. The screen froze up. So nothing for it but to again repeat the routine of shutting down the computer and restarting it.

But “whoa”, what in bloody ---- goes on here? Nothing came up. And no where could be found those weird files in my documents with a foreign name that oftentimes turn up to be the lost document. Nothing. Zilch.

I was horrified. I wanted to cry. I wanted to throw things and smash my laptop. I wanted to talk to someone who lost everything in a house fire so they would have some kind of real and sincere empathy for how I was feeling.

I wanted to go to the bridge and jump off. I wanted to rip out my hair and slash my wrists. I wanted to take words, adjectives, phrases, even thin helpless little pronouns to the garage and smash them on Hub’s anvil with his sledge hammer. I wanted to burn dictionaries.

I wanted to escape to a primitive world, to a time where we only communicated with grunts and yips. That kind of simplicity might offer me a hope of remembering what I had written. But what I had written had too much complexity and recalling it, with my current weakened state of recall, was quite out of the question. But amidst all this irrational thinking and heartbreaking frustration, peace and calm quickly descended.

Thankfully, I have this spiritual element. And so, with that, I was immediately convinced that there was a reason that this happened. That the God of my belief decided that it was not time for me to reveal what I so ardently wished to reveal. That the God of my belief had a problem with the articulation of what I had written. So I accepted that was how it was to be.

So yes, I think those with God beliefs live longer. I am one and I have far less stress with my spiritual crutch that prevents me from being, or doing desperate things that are completely rash and irrational.

So even the simplest of pronouns get to live another day -- "I", "she", "me"...