The Older I Get...

The older I get, the less I understand life. The list of things I don’t get is growing and try as I do to understand what makes people tick, what makes people make the choices they do, I just can’t figure it out. I spend a lot of time shaking my head back and forth and opening my mouth in jaw dropping moments, completely baffled about how gullible or sometimes just plain stupid or completely off the charts crazy people are.

For instance: I don’t understand why people who are unhappily married stay together. Half the time, I don’t understand how these same people ever got together in the first place. From the outside looking in I usually see the train wreck coming – though sometimes it’s actually years away. I know: The kids, the money, too late to start over…I know all that- but it does not make sense to me. Life is just too short for misery that we can control.

I once had a boyfriend who I loved so much it drove me crazy (granted a it was a short drive). Together, like rabbits trapped in a cage, we bred insanity. Looking back, I can see how our friends and family saw us. Our on again off again relationship lasted more than a decade, sometimes secretly, in between and during others. I’m not sure what finally ended it. Just weariness I guess. Well -that and no booze.

During that crazy relationship- on one of our splits, I went to stay with my mom, while I waited for my brother to come from Escondido and bring me back home with him while I recuperated from this particular broken heart. I was watching the television with my mom when the news cut in to the local program to tell the world about the Jim Jones Massacre. I wondered then, how so many people could follow a man who was clearly insane. As I sat there, crying, thinking my world was coming to an end and wondering how I would be able to live without my Jim K.- the real end came for 918 people and something in me shifted. I remember journaling my feelings of despair, helplessness and confusion. Religion, I deduced- was the culprit. It was mass mental illness. My mother agreed.

Thirty-three years later… and people are still following crazy preachers. I watched with disdain and disgust as last week people actually prepared for the so-called “Rapture”. I read about one man who drove 3000 miles across the country to come to the Bay Area for the Rapture… and people who gave away their lives savings, quit their jobs, gave away all their belongings- and they have no recourse. They can’t sue this nut- they got suckered. They had faith.

Harold Camping, the nut that started this whole mess, and who has supposedly studied the Bible for more than 50 years, believed that on May 21, 2011, 6PM-ish, a massive earthquake would’ve hit New Zealand and from there continued quaking around the world during the next 24 hours until May 21 is reached on both time zones. At the end of this 24-hour period, Harold Camping said believers would go to heaven and the rest (of us sane people) would be left on earth to face final judgment before the earth is destroyed.

Remember the other nut? What was his crazy name? Do? (pronounced Doe) (I always want to say Bambi) Marshall Applewhite. He had followers too- they are all dead now. His was a UFO religion. They didn’t consider it suicide, they just called it leaving the earth so their souls could get on the spaceship to “another level of existence.” They had faith.

I found a whole list of crazy religious movements- check this out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_new_religious_movements

I do understand there is religion without mass mental illness. I understand faith- but prefer irrefutable facts and science. I like proof. I research and research to make sure things make sense.

Okay- so back to why people stay together when they are clearly better off apart. Is it mental illness? Fear of the unknown? Laziness? Apathy? Is it fear of failure or the perception thereof? Is it FAITH that things will change? I’m still wondering. But, if any of you have the answers- please feel free to explain. Just bring the proof.