Writing 101: Day 4 – A God shaped hole in the Universe

Today’s Prompt: Write about a loss: something (or someone) that was part of your life, and isn’t any more.

Would I see a Thestral? Not really.

I thought hard about this. Loss. What have I really lost in my life? Apart from losing materialistic things that do not matter anyway- life, I guess, hasn’t been that hard on me. Touch wood. All the people who mean something to me, I still have them in my life. I might have grown apart with some momentarily, but we always found a way of getting back again.

And you ask me to write about loss. But I don’t want to delve into the what-could-have-been.

Then I think of things. And then something really strikes me hard. I did lose something.

Something I had plenty till my adolescence, but something that almost magically vanished from my life later on – faith. It’s not something I planned to do. It just sorta happened. Is there a switch that turns on and off in your brain to decide these things? I dunno. But faith, blind faith to be exact, is something I had a problem with ever since my childhood. I was always the skeptical one. The one who asked questions no body had perfect answers to. I think it’s called scientific temper, that’s what I had. So yes, this is not exactly a loss. But someone I willfully chose to let go. I let go of God.

I’m not gonna justify my position or my belief system here, you’re much better off without it. And I’m not anti-religious in any way, either. I have a lot of respect for people who believe in the divine. Religion teaches a lot of things and I’m no one to deny that. But again, I do believe that it is really possible to live without having to answer to a power.

I’ll only say the next few lines –

I live my life with the confidence and understanding that it is I who is at the steering wheel. That whatever happens or needs to happen to me rests purely on me. 

I live my life with the realization that I might not have been sent here with a purpose. That I can choose my purpose at will. That I’m nothing but a speck in this vast magnanimous universe.

I live my life with the fear that life here on Earth is all I’ve got. That I did not exist before. That I will not exist after I die. It makes me appreciate how crucial life here is. That I need to try harder to make the best use of it. I really feel for people who worry too much about what would happen after they die.