OMG!! Best, Funeral. EVAR! (773 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: 1.82 on 14 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by itchy <Mritchytoyou.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2004-05-20 17:51:13 EDT
Let's see, I've been on Uber for almost a year, and this is the second funeral I've written about. Ever wonder if you are some sort of angel of death in disguise? Yeah, me neither.
So anyway, I went to this funeral today. I really didn't want to go. It wasn't for anyone I was particularly close with. Just a lady from my church. The mother of a couple of the kids I used to work with in the church youth group. Amazing kids. I just felt like I should be there . . . just in case they needed someone to talk to.
They didn't. In fact, one of them got up and tried to speak about her mother. She broke down half-way through, and after the youth pastor got up and read what was left of what she had wanted to say, I knew there was no way should could have made it through the whole thing. Some serious, serious hardcore emotion in those words.
As I was clenching my teeth, trying to keep myself from crying as he read them, I realized something sickening.
I get off on empathy. I am an emotion vampire.
See, its kind of like this . . .
My whole life, I've been kind of numb inside. (Don't worry. I'm not about to launch into goth or emo poetry or anything.) It isn't that I didn't or don't have feelings, its just that they aren't particularly powerful. I guess I'm just not all that passionate. . . . about anything. I love my son. I love my wife. I love my family. But none of those are like, you know, MOVIE love.
There isn't a stirring crescendo of music when I get home from work and kiss my wife. My love life isn't like a porn movie. Life, even at its best, is just sort of . . . what? Disappointing? Underwhelming?
I feel like I'm listening to the greatest album ever recorded with the volume turned way down. I should be getting more out of this. Or, to quote thirty-something yuppies all over the world, "is this all there is?"
And so I find myself looking outside myself for the passion and emotions I think I SHOULD be having. I do things like go to a funeral and there I am inspired by the amazing life lost (and what I learned about the lady who died may be whole post in itself some day - inspirational woman) and the REAL emotion on display. I feel for the people I'm watching. I feel with them. Even though they are suffering through grief, perhaps the worst or least desirable emotion we as a race posses, I want some too.
I somehow think that I am entitled to have a more extreme or powerful or rewarding life. I don't know where I got this idea for sure, but I think I have a hunch. However, the implications of that hunch terrify me to my very bones.
It is possible that my television has been lying to me.
Now, the astute and appropriately jaded Uber user is now thinking something along the lines of, "No shit? T.V. isn't real? -2." Ha. Ha.
What I'm getting at is that I should know better. I'm about as savvy as you can be with regard to advertising. I don't buy products simply because of a flashy ad campaign. I have learned to filter that out. We all have.
But somewhere, something got through my defenses. Worse yet, I may have LET it through. I invited it in. The vampire cannot enter through the front door without receiving permission to do so, didn't I read that somewhere? No wait, I think that was a Corey Haim movie. Lost Boys.
Crap. There goes any credibility this post might have had.
Anyway, what I let in was sensationalism. Emotionalism. The notion that my life could or should be like the movie Tombstone (a movie that features Kirk Douglas, I might add). Sure, I never expected to have gunfights at the O.K. Corral, or a sweeeeeeet assed moustache, but somehow I DID think that I would fall so passionately in love with a rich actress that I would leave my opiate addicted wife. Or . . . something like that. You know what I mean?
I immediately discount the physical aspects to movies, but I hold out hope that the emotional aspect to them might be real. I intentionally overlook the possibility that the emotional parts are just as amplified as the physical.
And I think that is what makes us numb.
We are numb because we expect too much. When we look at our lives, we compare them to what we see on TV or in movies and we are disappointed, even though we should know better. We SHOULD know better.
But I sure don't act like I do. Instead, when I go to a funeral, I project movie emotions onto the people suffering there. This imagined grief is what truly moves me I think. I can't really know what is going on inside those people, but what I imagine is so much more powerful than what I really feel.
So I'm left to wonder if it is me. Am I not LIVING TO THE FULLEST, or some will-to-power type-thing? Or is it that I really just do expect to much and I need to learn to appreciate what I have?
I don't know, I'm not explaining this well and this thing is a train-wreck at this point. Maybe I had better just let it die.
Nah. Someone might get it, or better yet, have an answer.
Cheers.
User Reviews
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2005-02-02 10:19:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Have you read my war is cool piece?
Similar thing going on with my but with tragedy.
Submitted by humor_me (user info) at 2004-05-23 23:56:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I love you. Can I touch your man boobies?
Submitted by Spiral_Abraxis (user info) at 2004-05-23 12:40:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by mystiamoon (user info) at 2004-05-23 12:22:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This post is not teh suck.
Submitted by legallady (user info) at 2004-05-20 23:39:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
WOW. I think a lot of us experience this. Good post
Mr. Itchy. I began with emotion 2 years ago when my brother
died. A long story but hit me hard. Went thru a mini midlife
crisis thing. But damn, I feel emotion now! sometimes I wish
I could return to just being the spectator you describe.
Submitted by ThatOneGirl (user info) at 2004-05-20 22:24:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I think I see what you mean.
I expect too much also.... and then most days just end up being a letdown.
Submitted by SacredHeart (user info) at 2004-05-20 19:08:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
It's simple. Get rid of all TV,movies, romance novels, and Cosmo magazines, and the world would be a better place. Personally I do not imagine placed emotions in that situation. I somehow manage to get the feeling, if only for an instance, that it is my mother being eulogized. In that second, my heart breaks, my world crumbles, and I am brought to my knees, only to be lifted up again with a better grasp on life and exactly how prescious it is.
Submitted by itchy (user info) at 2004-05-20 19:06:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
this post is teh suck.
Submitted by BalloonKnot (user info) at 2004-05-20 18:46:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
+2 because of this post http://www.ubersite.com/m/33597
Balloon Knot has spoken!
Submitted by Yes (user info) at 2004-05-20 18:09:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I don't know nuthin' bout dem dere feelin's an such, but have you ever cleaned your ear with a screwdriver, the cold metal feels really good...
...
time for the left ear... ahhhhh, that feels nice...
+2, for, well, not being a douche.
Submitted by Dufflady (user info) at 2004-05-20 18:02:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I had a slight idea of what you meant.
I find myself seeking out things that make me think and feel inspired. Try directing it toward something better and positive.
I love hearing stories from older and wiser people. Reading my family's history or about a famous person who overcame things is also a good way to quench that feeling. Often, things like that can be emotional but you are likely to learn something you can use later.
Submitted by Captain-Cretin (user info) at 2004-05-20 17:58:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
deep.
The Lost Boys is based on a short story by a Mormon Author called Orson Scott Card and is well worth reading, it is far better than the film; its in Maps In A Mirror vol 1.
Dont read the first story if you are at all squemish, it gives me the creeps.
isbn 0-09-988480-1
Submitted by slowlyrotting (user info) at 2004-05-20 17:53:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm going to piss off Razor with this one but...
+2 because The Lost Boys is the fucking shit.
Submitted by ohlookasquirrel (user info) at 2004-05-20 17:52:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Suspennnnsssiiioooonnnnnn oooooof disbelieeeefffffffff