And So Ends Everything
I went to bed on the edge of panic last night. I misplaced the digital control unit for my insulin pump. I am insulin dependent. I thought that I knew where I placed the small electronic device. My first mission of the next day would be to return to the coffee shop where I had spent the evening with friends, to retrieve the device.
To shorten the story, I have the device now. And I did not leave it where upon reflection it was most likely to be. Nevertheless I found it, unaccountably, miraculously, to use a religious term, right where I had left it—– on a park bench, accessible to anyone who walked by. “Miracles” do happen.
The temporary loss of my ability to monitor the demands of my body for insulin caused me to consider what would happen if I were to be deprived of insulin for a few hours. To summarize, my consciousness would fade like the flame of a candle in a glass, when the wax dwindles and runs out. Not a pleasant thought to hold in one’s mind.
Here are some exquisite lines from Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse.
I thought of that sordid hole in the clay of the cemetery
into which some unknown person
had been lowered that day.
I thought of the pinched faces
of the bored fellow-Christians
and I could not even laugh.There in that sordid hole in the clay,
I thought, to the accompaniment
of stupid and insincere ministrations
and the no less stupid and insincere demeanor
of the group of mourners,
in the discomforting sight of all the metal crosses
and marble slabs
and artificial flowers of wire and glass,
ended not only that unknown man,
and, tomorrow or the day after,
myself as well,
buried in the soil with a hypocritical show of sorrow—no, there and so ended everything;
all our striving, all our culture,
all our beliefs, all our
joy and pleasure in life—
already sick and soon to be buried there too.Our whole civilization was a cemetery
where Jesus Christ and Socrates,
Mozart and Haydn, Dante and Goethe
were but the indecipherable names on moldering stones;
and the mourners who stood round
affecting a pretense of sorrow
would give much to believe in these inscriptions
which once were holy,
or at least to utter
one heart-felt word of grief
and despair about this world that is no more.
And nothing was left them
but the embarrassed grimaces of a company round a grave.
—-Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse p. 77
