Nasty, Brutish and Short? Whoa!

1968

A human life is a swatch snipped from the fabric of eternity.  It begins with a shock for the born and pain for the bearer.  Life is given a harsh reception, slapped into life by a strange force.  After the comfort of a self-centered world it opens eyes to too bright light and in a vast space it can’t comprehend. From being satisfied automatically, it must fend for its comforts.  From this point on life is a challenge.  It must find a method of survival.

Human life finds itself in the cold world.  Not only must it begin a search for survival, but for the meaning of its survival.  As it grows, more and more is its survival in its own hands.  And like the doctor’s initial slap, it discovers most situations are hostile.

As human life learns more, the more it finds that living is coping with these hostile situations.  It can no longer expect to grow fat and warm without exerting an effort.  This is a brutal realization. Now it must make its own way against many unfriendly events and nasty circumstances.

It must be willing to fight to survive.  It must search out and face the truth.  It must accept the reality of the world.  It must understand that poverty and filth and violence and pain and loss exist in all their nastiness.  Or it will withdraw from the truth and construct its own world as a shell.  Still, there is a difference between surviving and living.  If it wants to live, it will seek the truth and struggle against the nastiness and not hide from trouble.  It will seek the how of life and not just the why. 

Whether it succeeds will depend on its quickness to learn. It must learn quickly, for its swatch in the fabric of time is short.  Time runs away from life.  In the end time always wins and the human dies.  Every human life ends in death.  This is one truth learned early.  It is not only the expected event; it is the certain event.  Death is the most brutish aspect of life.

Life knows in the end it must die, but if it cannot be sure if there is something beyond death, then that human life is nasty, brutish and short.  It is brutally born, squeezed, yanked and slapped to life.  It lives but a short time against the measuring stick of eternity, burning as a brief candle.  And it dies in nasty uncertainty.

Picture at top of post is of Thomas Hobbes. You can learn more about Hobbes by clicking on the title of this post.