“It’s not helpful to feel anything,” he says, looking up at clouds in the distance. “Feelings just cloud good judgment. We should be like calculators and scales; just crunch the numbers, weigh the good and bad, and make decisions accordingly. Feelings just muddy what’s real.”
“Then our feelings aren’t real?” the other he ask. “Our feelings are what?”
“Whatever the soul is, hard to quantify.” he says.
“But my soul is real, yours too, you use it to determine value. Without the soul and feelings as a starting point, then not even value exists. Some believe that without God there can be no soul.” the other he says.
“Then it’s all nothing then, it’s all for nothing.” he says. “Until God shows me that my reason is flawed, then even It is nothing.”
“Is He nothing if everything we know is attributed to Him?” the other he asks.
“All this nothing, worthlessness? Yes, he who begat nothing is nothing.” he says.
Some time later the two are strolling.
The other he says, “If you are nothing, if everything is nothing, why walk with me?”
He says, “Because nothing isn’t a complete void. We can find meaning in nothing.”
The other he says, “Meaning in nothing is oxymoronic. The definition of nothing is the lack of something.”
“Not my definition,” he says, “something is nothing if it has no permanence. Nothing equates to temporary, temporary things can seem to boast importance, but when the temporary expires as it is known to do, then it fades to nothing. I am being expedient in calling the temporary nothing, skipping the middle man.”
“So, things matter until they don’t?” the other he asks.
“Precisely, I am nothing with a purpose, until the day that I accept my inheritance; nothingness.”
“Then, you must think that the soul ceases when your body expires.” the other he says.
“Even if it doesn’t, my body is the way to interact with this world and without that, what purpose do I have with it? Which is to say that it is very possible for the soul to exist without the body, and that the soul untethered from the body can perceive existence in very different ways.”
The other he says, “So, if the soul can go on, then it has a sort of permanence that makes it more than eventual nothing.”
“But maybe I’m wrong.” he says.
The other he says, “Because we don’t know, we just have to make a choice; either belive that we have a purpose or settle with the scary notion that all of our lives are a waste of despair.”
“It’s not settling if its the truth.” he says.
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