Light installation in Lund, Sweden 2017. Source here
Podéis encontrar la versión en castellano aquí.
C and I are raising three children with whom we still unwillingly play our own version of “Musical Chairs” almost every night. In our kafkian version, music is replaced by “Mum, I want to sleep with you”, and beds replace chairs. The funny part is that at least one bed is always empty in the morning. You know where you go to sleep; you do not know where you will wake up.
I have issues with the lack of information about children’s own whacky circadian rhythms. Why does it take bombs to wake them up at 7 am on a weekday, but then they are happily running around the house shouting, “I’m HUNGRY” at 5:30 on a Saturday? What type of fucked up internal clock is that? Only last week, when E was singing to the top of his lungs at 6 am, “Beat it” (yes, the Michael Jackson song), I murmured to C “Babe, only 15 more years to go”. C’s dismal response was, “I don’t think I am going to make it to 15 years”.
To give you an idea of the amount of sleep deprivation I am carrying around, I attend scientific congresses just to have a hotel room of my own, and I sneak out of dinners with colleagues to go to bed at nine p.m. Lack of sleep is a form of torture, and I am starting to show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.” I keep hearing from other writers to address the fact that bliss doesn’t sell because it’s boring. I myself think that bliss is just misunderstood. What I actually like most about it is the idea of nothing happening. Neither hot nor cold, neither here nor there. No shocks or outbursts. Nothing happening might just be the thing for me.
However, being raised a Catholic, I have been told that Heaven is where the action is. A picture of Bernini’s version of Ecstasy of Saint Teresa was in almost every religion book I had throughout elementary, middle and high school. Go ahead and study the face of Saint Teresa experiencing godly euphoria. If this is what Eternity in Heaven looks like, all I can say about perpetual rapture is that it seems exhausting, much like eternal damnation. Thanks, but no thanks, I’ll have a cup of camomile tea and call it a night.
There is a song by Nacho Vegas in which he calls in everyone to say goodbye from his deathbed. The song is pure gold. At some point, he says:
And don’t speak to me of eternity
Don't talk to me of heaven and hell any more
Don't you see? I pray to a God who promised me
That when this is over, there will be nothing more
This has been enough
This song perfectly summarises my feelings on all matters “Eternity”. Talking about Heaven and Hell with my mum, as catholic women do every so often, I explained to her my theory-
“Mum, I think I don’t want Heaven to exist”.
“How so?”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind eternal rest. Just plain Nothing. I like sleeping.”
“But Hell?”
“Oh yeah! Hell has to exist. Lehman Brothers and the likes need some perpetual damnation; it’s only fair.”
“So what about the good people who had a bad life? Don’t they deserve eternal Joy?”
“By all means, let them have that if that is what they want. Heaven could be a “choose your own adventure” type of experience.”
My mum is not convinced about this. She was raised to think that Heaven is a one-size-fits-all affair. I, on the other side, was sent to a school run by progressive nuns. I see God as a flexible entity. When putting my idea out there, some people have remarked, “Wait, so while some people are having fun for all Eternity, you would sleep?”. And I know they only point this out because of the well-established phenomenon of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out for those not so well-read in acronyms). What they do not know is that I went without a smartphone for a whole year when my daughter was born. Life was just too much to handle as it was, so I reduced my exposure to everything else. Do you know what happened that year? What had I missed? NOTHING. So I know for a fact that FOMO is a machiavellian invention of Meta and Google to keep us coming back for more. I am immune to the noise sold in little bags labelled as “entertainment”. Actually, that is not true. I let myself go down rabbit holes in YouTube trying to understand the likes of “Freelee the Banana Girl” and “The Fat Liberation Movement” or “How to achieve the perfect pull-up from the comfort of your couch”, only to come out the other side three hours later non-the-wiser, just three hours older. Talk about Hell. I would put Stalin to watch make-up tutorials on an eternal roster. The punishment should fit the crime.
So, all in all, the idea of NOTHING for all Eternity sounds soothing and sublime. I would add heavenly, even. Give me eternal rest; I´ll take it.
Not me, i want to see and talk with my grandparents, parents old friends and play with all the dogs i had. I would apologize to my grandmother for not ever wearing the shirt she made me for Christmas when i was 12. And i would listen more carefully to my grandparent’s stories and of course when meeting all of them in heaven, they would tell me they forgive me and that they love me. And maybe later i would find a quiet place to take it all in and fall peacefully asleep.
This is really good, familiar, funny and real like life itself.