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Being and Nothingness
Sep. 17th, 2005 03:15 pmI've alluded to this story a time or two on the Bujold list, and once, I think, on LJ, but I thought I'd put it down in full for once.
I don't remember just when what I'm about to recount happened; I deduce, from internal evidence, that I was probably about five years old. I should also mention that I've told the story - to others and to myself - enough times that some fabulation has crept in, so the details should probably be taken with a grain of salt. The core of the story, I feel sure, is true, and the details, if wrong in places, are at least in keeping with its spirit.
I was a voracious reader from an early age, and my parents made sure I had plenty of reading matter. One of my early favorites was Edith Hamilton's Mythology; I read and reread the stories of the Greek and Roman gods (and the Norse ones as well) with great enjoyment.
At this time, my parents (and perforce their children) were regular churchgoers; we attended military churches, which preached a generic brand of Protestantism. This attendance, coupled with my reading preferences, soon led me to a conundrum. On the one hand, I was reading these stories about a large number of gods, with names like Jupiter and Hera. (I knew that most of them apparently had two names; I wasn't clear on why. The very concept of a foreign language was not yet in my mental inventory. I generally settled for whichever name I thought I could pronounce.) On the other, every Sunday I was told that there was one god, whose name was God, and there weren't any others. This confused me somewhat.
Thinking about it, I concluded, something must have happened. The possibility that the old gods had died seemed most likely to me. The Norse myths, after all, spoke plainly of the death of gods. Also, in another book (The Book of Knowledge, which was, I think, a sort of children's encyclopedia), I'd been reading an article about the origins of the names of the days of the week; it included such phrases as Mercurii dies, and - to my mind, as yet innocent of Latin - this somehow supported my tentative conclusion.
Nonetheless, I was still uncertain, so I decided to ask my mother about it. She was occupied with housework - perhaps ironing, perhaps washing dishes; I remember her standing with her back to me, with light from a window framing her. Thus, perhaps, she didn't notice the urgency with which I asked the question. She replied, simply, that they (the Greco-Roman gods) had never existed.
I was stunned. I swallowed dryly, said "Oh", and wandered away. They never existed. Death I was prepared for; not this.
There is a very old Peanuts cartoon. In it, Linus is talking to Charlie Brown about a quarrel with Lucy; he says something like the following. "She said she wished I'd never been born. Can you believe that? Never been born... Brrr! Why, the theological implications alone are staggering!"
Linus, buddy, I know just how you felt.
I don't remember just when what I'm about to recount happened; I deduce, from internal evidence, that I was probably about five years old. I should also mention that I've told the story - to others and to myself - enough times that some fabulation has crept in, so the details should probably be taken with a grain of salt. The core of the story, I feel sure, is true, and the details, if wrong in places, are at least in keeping with its spirit.
I was a voracious reader from an early age, and my parents made sure I had plenty of reading matter. One of my early favorites was Edith Hamilton's Mythology; I read and reread the stories of the Greek and Roman gods (and the Norse ones as well) with great enjoyment.
At this time, my parents (and perforce their children) were regular churchgoers; we attended military churches, which preached a generic brand of Protestantism. This attendance, coupled with my reading preferences, soon led me to a conundrum. On the one hand, I was reading these stories about a large number of gods, with names like Jupiter and Hera. (I knew that most of them apparently had two names; I wasn't clear on why. The very concept of a foreign language was not yet in my mental inventory. I generally settled for whichever name I thought I could pronounce.) On the other, every Sunday I was told that there was one god, whose name was God, and there weren't any others. This confused me somewhat.
Thinking about it, I concluded, something must have happened. The possibility that the old gods had died seemed most likely to me. The Norse myths, after all, spoke plainly of the death of gods. Also, in another book (The Book of Knowledge, which was, I think, a sort of children's encyclopedia), I'd been reading an article about the origins of the names of the days of the week; it included such phrases as Mercurii dies, and - to my mind, as yet innocent of Latin - this somehow supported my tentative conclusion.
Nonetheless, I was still uncertain, so I decided to ask my mother about it. She was occupied with housework - perhaps ironing, perhaps washing dishes; I remember her standing with her back to me, with light from a window framing her. Thus, perhaps, she didn't notice the urgency with which I asked the question. She replied, simply, that they (the Greco-Roman gods) had never existed.
I was stunned. I swallowed dryly, said "Oh", and wandered away. They never existed. Death I was prepared for; not this.
There is a very old Peanuts cartoon. In it, Linus is talking to Charlie Brown about a quarrel with Lucy; he says something like the following. "She said she wished I'd never been born. Can you believe that? Never been born... Brrr! Why, the theological implications alone are staggering!"
Linus, buddy, I know just how you felt.
