What lies at the heart of an adventure?(1)

“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
    -- J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan.

My friends and family worry about me because I talk about my death.

“You’re not dead, yet!” “Are you going to die?” “You’re alive today.”

And, I must admit, I hesitate to write about the subject because of the reaction. But I find the discussion brings clarity to my life. Some day, I will die, I will cease to exist. Perhaps, I will take another form, move on, go somewhere.

As a teenager, I imagined that everyone would go exactly where they thought they would when they died. So, if you thought you were going to live in the clouds with lots of harps, you’d go to live in the clouds with lots of harps. If you thought you were going to burn for your sins, then you would burn for your sins. If you thought you were coming back as an ant, you would come back as an ant. I preferred to believe that when I died I would become a star, a large ball of thermonuclear hydrogen and helium, light for the universe.

Did I ever tell you the insight I got one morning, in bed, before awake, but after sleep? I was pondering energy use, and global warming…

I was raised by parents who were children during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. My mother was notoriously thrifty. She taught me about saving, and recycling. One of my chores as a child was to clean the used plastic bags. I especially remember the colorful Wonder Bread bags. I would wash them, turn them inside out, shake them to get most of the water off, and stand them in the dish rack to dry with the dishes. Once dry, they went into a drawer for use later, perhaps to store food in the freezer (bought on sale, of course). My mother recycled and reused everything she could. “I was raised in the Depression. You never knew when you might wish you hadn’t thrown something away.” After my mother passed away, we found drawers full of old plastic bags, cleaned and inside out.

Needless to say, I was imprinted with conservation. This was fine, until I got married. My wife was very organized, and so threw things away that weren’t used right away. “You’re a hoarder,” she’d say of my drawers full of bags.

This led me to great moments of despair. Global warming was the result of throwing away my plastic bags!

Then I thought about stars, being a star, shining, heating, all that energy being spewed into the universe, all the stars in the universe, burning, throwing off energy, and most of it, nearly all of it, radioactive, and going into space, polluting, being wasted.

That’s when I heard Tom Bodett’s folksy voice saying, “We’ll leave the light on for you!”

For over 30 years Tom Bodett has been the advertising voice of Motel 6, a chain of once-upon-a-time $6/night motels built for the burgeoning “road trip” market along the early freeway system of the United States. He’d end each ad with the friendly, considerate, “We’ll leave the light on for you.”

That’s when it hit me. Stars are God’s way of leaving the light on for us! That was my insight. Stars shine bright, advertising places to stay in the universe, planets to be visited, homes away from home along the universal road trip. God’s left the light on for us!

Okay, I know, what’s that got to do with global warming? And cleaning plastic bags? And the adventure of becoming a star when I die?

Hey, like I said, it was before I was awake! Give me a break!
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(1) This was today's prompt from Collective Journaling led by Peter Limberg, which I was offered through the Internet Real Life sessions from The Dark Forest Collective on Metalabel:

Welcome to Collective Journaling, a place where we write in silence, together… with music :)

Song of the day: Stayin’ Alive https://open.spotify.com/track/5cP52DlDN9yryuZVQDg3iq?si=717aa99e2c6f4c7d

Quote of the day:  "In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.” - Miguel de Cervantes

Prompt of the day: What adventures does the rest of the spring and upcoming summer hold for you? What lies at the heart of an adventure? Why is living adventurously important — or is it not? (Or just write about whatever is alive or bothersome for you today.)