I’m soul-sucking tired, hurt all over, counting the days till hernia surgery number two inside of two years, and I guess I feel like talking to Jesus again.

Sometimes I wish I could go back, unsee what I’ve seen; it’s easier to feel satisfied when you’re delusional. Not that I’m not delusional; I’m just not fully committed to the delusion. Is that where satisfaction happens? Full commitment? At least, the attempt at full commitment. (People are rarely what they say they are, much less what they think they are.)

If commitment to a belief system is like commitment to an operating system—I’m a Windows guy; I’m a Linux guy; I’m an iOS guy—what’s a guy like me supposed to do? Muddle through life, sanctimonious because I’m one who understands none of these systems are real? Ones and zeroes, folks; don’t you see? It’s all ones and zeroes…

Sanctimony. I cannot think of an uglier word.

The problem with satisfaction: it is deceptive as it is fleeting. We all crave it, occasionally experience it, and we are often tricked into believing there is a way to make it stick. Isn’t that the dream of Heaven? Streets of gold, angel song, little pink houses for you and me. Eternal satisfaction, baby.

I guess we go wrong when we associate Heaven with geography. Actually, the wrong starts the moment we give It a name. Once you’ve given something a name, it’s impossible not to tell a story about it, and now you’re in the world of metaphor, which is six inches from the realm of abstraction, and nothing captures a human’s soul more thoroughly than abstraction. Suddenly you’re in the precise opposite of Heaven. You’re in the over there, the some day, the I wish…Heaven can’t even exist in the same room.

We should talk about the forthcoming surgery I mentioned—how much I’m looking forward to it, not because of the hope of being hernia free, but because of the drugged into oblivion part, which is silly since I’ll have no memory of it. Let’s call it what it is, as there’s no difference: I’m looking forward to death. I’m not suicidal (don’t think so anyway); I’m just tired.

The Heavenly dream I’ve heard some describe: I must confess, seems to me more of a nightmare. Billions of humans, wandering the cosmos, eternally pining for something different.

What’s that? You think, a ticket to Heaven includes a spiritual lobotomy? Fair enough. But a human with their storyteller removed, are they still human?