Absurdity

Do you ever get the feeling that life sometimes just doesn't make sense? That it is incongruous to the point of absurdity? That ridiculously tragic things happen seemingly by coincidence, ridiculous enough to make you laugh but tragic enough to make you cry?

Consider the following true story. A few years ago, a new library was under construction on my university campus. It was huge, new, big and beautiful. One day, a bunch of drunk college students decided to party at the top floor of the still unfinished building. One of them spied am opening which he believed was the entrance of a laundry chute. As alcohol can drive men to do strange things, he decided to embrace his inner wild self and jump in "for a ride". The "laundry chute" turned out to be a garbage chute and he was crushed to death beneath a garbage compactor. The library is now finished, and it is big and grand indeed, but nobody ever goes there anymore. It is now scheduled to be sold and possibly torn down, believed as it is to be "cursed" and haunted.

Consider also the following fictional, yet all too possibly true story. A man walks down a lonely street. He is a Harvard graduate with a major in astrophysics, a highly intelligent man and a potential Nobel Prize laureate. He is recently married, with a beautiful wife and baby. He has recently published a highly-acclaimed article in one of the best scientific journals. In short, he has everything going for him. Then a truck carrying a shipment of adult diapers turns the corner in a speeding rush and knocks him down. He dies on the spot, killed by a truckload of huge diapers.

Can you not sense the absurdity of it all? Can you not see the incongruity of the thrill the college boy experienced as he slid down the chute with the emotionless, unthinking, mechanical crushing force of the garbage compactor that takes his life? Or the ridiculousness of living a full life at one moment and being killed by, of all things, a truckload of adult diapers the next? Yes, one can laugh at the absurdity of it, and yet it is tragic enough that it is not funny at all.

Imagine the following conversation in heaven:

"Hey there, how did you die?"

"Me? Haha, I got crushed by vending machine when it fell over as I kicked it because it stole my money. That's pretty stupid, ain't it?"

"Not as stupid as mine. I was about to propose to my girlfriend when I choked on a meatball and suffocated to death."

"I was recording a parachuting course when I mistook the camera on my back for a parachute and jumped off the plane."

"I am a three-times Olympic gold medallist swimmer and I drowned in my bathtub."

"And I got hit by a truckload of diapers."

Funny, yes. How ridiculously absurd! And yet, the sobering truth is that the laws of nature are completely ignorant of mankind's thoughts, actions, and emotions. Nature doesn't care who we are. No matter how much we try to understand it or harness it or bend it to our will, the fact is that the physical world we live in is completely indifferent about whether we live or die. We call ourselves the masters of nature, but in reality all we do is adapt to a physical world that changes constantly regardless of our needs and wants. We expect nature to conform to our needs and wants: we tell ourselves that it MUST rain because the crops MUST grow, that it MUST stop raining because we WANT to go on a picnic, that it MUST snow because HELLO, it's CHRISTMAS! But time and tide wait for no man. That truckload of diapers speeding towards you isn't going to stop just because you're the President of the United States or a Nobel Laureate, it's going to hit you anyway because objects in motions stay in motion and the brakes are gone.

I will close with a scene from an anonymous comic strip. A man and his wife are having a picnic dinner under the vast, starry night shy. The woman looks up and says, "Don't you just feel so small and insignificant sometimes?" The man turns to the woman with an incredulous look in his eyes and replies, "Me, small? I've just been elected as the CEO of Barney and Co.!!"

Ironic, isn't it?

Ah, life. So absurd, yet so beautiful.