We Don't Know How It's Ending

There are a few things I should point out before I jump into discussing The End Of The World As We Know It:

1) This post is late. Very late. *bows head in shame*

2) This is post number 100. Long live The TASG! *raises superhero ring to the heavens*

Now that those things are out of the way, I will continue with the regularly scheduled programming (which is not true - Allison is supposed to post at this point but Tom and I operate in our own personal time zones, so you're stuck with me...but I digress).

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't somewhat fascinated by the whole concept of the world ending. I have countless songs devoted to the topic. I even co-wrote a post-apocalyptic rock opera in college (it was synced with footage from "Night Of The Living Dead" and everything). I'm a sucker for any of that end-of-the-world zombie apocalypse crap and I even have several ideas of how I will fight for my own survival in an apocalyptic situation. So when everyone went crazy with the rapture hype, I couldn't help but use it as an excuse to think too much about the end times. And naturally, when the rapture scare was all said and done, I found myself in that strange state of existentialism that sometimes engulfs my brain when I think too much.

I didn't think the world was actually going to go all Biblical on May 21st. I paid attention in Sunday school growing up and I knew that Jesus probably wasn't going to tell anyone he was coming back - he was just going to show up. But the whole thing got my mind rolling. What if the world did suddenly come to an end? What the universe suddenly expanded to the point of breaking apart and everything ceased to exist? What if the sun exploded or the Mayans came back from the dead? What then? All we have accomplished on earth will become completely irrelevant and we will inevitably become extinct.

So what is the point of anything if we're all just ultimately going fade away into nothingness???

The day after the rapture was scheduled to happen, a man jumped off a ten-story parking garage and killed himself right outside my neighbor's place of employment. She was late coming home because the whole street was blocked off. I guess the guy was yelling about how he missed the rapture right before he jumped. I guess a lot of people tried to stop him but he was too upset with God and himself to listen to them. He truly believed that Jesus had left him behind and he would have to face the end of the world. It's an incredibly sad story that I wasn't entirely sure how to process. My neighbor mentioned it so casually in conversation ("They had to scrape a guy off of the sidewalk today because he missed The Rapture") and catapulted into a related story about how her coworker spent three hours trapped in a sushi place because of the incident. I was still stuck on the fact that a guy killed himself because of the rapture scare. He was so worried about the world ending that he ended his own world prematurely. If that's not dramatic irony in action, I don't know what is.

I think the only thing we can really know for sure is that we are alive and on this planet right here in this very moment. So we've got to live our lives to the fullest, keep our brains out of that abyss known as existentialism, and make peace with the fact that we don't really know how the world will end.

Anyway, this post has become awkwardly heavy. So I shall leave you with a song:



(Note: This video is very old, but the song is relevant.)