Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
–Dylan Thomas
One of my favorite poems since I first read it, now “Do Not Go Gentle” seems to speak directly to the moment. Here at the end of life, one’s impulse indeed is to fight the pending end, to quarrel with it, to sock it back, to dodge out of its way.
All futility, of course. Life begins. Life ends. We can’t evade those fundamental truths.
Is life itself futile?
I don’t know. If there’s a God, why would that god invent such an elaborate creation, if not for some reason?
Okay, okay: Out of boredom.
Yeah, that makes some sense. It might even make more sense than the theory that God created life to satisfy some goal, to make something happen, because it mattered.
Sometimes it seems as though nothing matters. Other times, as though everything matters.
What to make of that confusion?
Nothing, I reckon. Who, after all, are we to imagine that God — if there is a God — would have some reason for building creation? Other than boredom, that is.
What we need to contend with, on a logical and on an emotional level, is simply that none of it makes any sense. Not to the mere human mind, anyway.
If it did make sense, we would not ask these questions, would we? We would not imagine or envision a God, would we? Because we would know. If there were a Truth, we would know that truth.
We who are human may imagine we know truth. But objectively speaking: no. We cannot. Because we’re merely human. Existence is so vast, so outrageous that there’s no way for we who are humans to make sense of it.
Maybe it doesn’t make sense, hm?
Even if life, the universe, and everything don’t have meaning, I think it’s a very human impulse to try to find meaning in them. After all, if the universe means something, then we must mean something, right?
I think that if we assign something as abstract as the cosmos a meaning, then it takes on that meaning, at least for us – though there’s no way, at least on this earthly plane, to ever know for sure if we’re right.
I’ve never managed to figure out the meaning of everything, and I can’t quite manage the trick of convincing myself that I have. I get caught up in abstractions and “but what about?”s and end up right back where I started, completely baffled.
It might be easier to take the nihilistic view that it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, to take any action would be pointless – but I surely can’t convince myself of that, either! I have to believe that life matters, and what we do with our lives matters, that there’s some point to existance, even if I’m not sure what it is.