Tuesday, June 22, 2010

When god is busy we get to live another day

God to us is nothing more than a superior being. A being that for whatever chance of evolution or fate has powers that to us seem omnipotent. A being that is able to control our existence to suit his will. But as with everything in life, that is nothing more than perception - to a ladybug I may be god: omnipotent, omnipresent and indecipherable. I'm convinced my dog thinks I'm some kind of deity; this faith is reinforced every time I leave the house empty handed and come back with a roast chicken... An essay written by a friend of my mother's first made me consider this concept. It was written in Portuguese and I haven't read since I had enough youth to ponder such things, but it stayed with me. He described being in the bathroom performing his morning ablutions when he noticed a mosquito on the wall. He thought of swatting it but he was busy at that moment and so the mosquito got a stay of execution until god was ready to leave the bathroom. For at that moment he felt like god; he imagined that for that mosquito he held the power of life and death, he was the supreme being, he had absolute power and wondered if the mosquito knew that it shared a bathroom with god. He was amused by the thought and continued to shave. By the time he was done shaving, the cares of everyday had occupied his mind and the mosquito had been forgotten. He left the bathroom and the mosquito lived. It lived because god had a careless moment.

The thought that we may owe our existence to god's busy schedule still amuses me.

The author of the story that stayed with me all these years was Ibere Camargo, a brilliant man. Sorry I don't have the reference, but the book is in my mother's library and I don't have it with me. I believe it was called No Andar do Tempo.

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