The Rapture that Wasn't

It's been more than a week, now, since the world was scheduled to end. No one is even talking about it anymore, when just two weeks ago it trended on twitter, and was in the status update line of nearly all my Facebook friends. I avoided talking about it, facebooking about it, blogging about it (I don't tweet ... though I do have an account). I avoided it for a couple of reasons.

First, I really didn't like all the teasing that folks were doing. Have you ever been afraid? Irrationally? Have you ever been convinced the world is going to end? That your friends would leave you? That your child would die? That your plane would crash? That you'll die in your sleep? That your husband/lover/partner/best friend will up and leave?

I suffer from anxiety and occasional panic attacks - so some of those fears and feelings are familiar to me. Irrational. Unwelcome. But familiar.

I don't think, though, that you have to suffer from panic to have the occasional feeling of being precariously close to the end of something. Brene Brown calls one version of it "foreboding joy."

So, those folks who believed that the end was coming on May 21st, they were simply, in my view, trying to control the anxiety that we're all a bit prone to -- the panic that comes with the certainty that it could all end in an instant. They were trying to control it by predicting it - by calculating down to the last second when it would happen. And, they were trying to ensure that they would somehow survive -- survive because they were "in" and others were "out" -- survive because their god would save them - yes after death, but save them nonetheless. I don't agree with their vision of god. But I understand and sympathize with their desire to control and define the end.

Because, and here is the second reason I couldn't join all the rapture talk, it really all could have ended on May 21st. One of the essential tenets of Buddhism, as I understand it, is that we humans are much too attached (for our own good) to ever-changing material reality. Our lives really could end in an instant. The gift of our days is an uncertain gift. The rapture folks have a germ of truth in their fears - they have the understanding that we're not in control of our days. Of course, they took the extreme of trying to calculate and control - but are they really the only ones of us who do this? What else is the datebook I carry? The computer schedule I update? The blog I am posting ... except for a manifestation of my interest in making a mark, setting it down, and being here -- now, and .... later?

So, I felt sympathy for the certain and scared Rapture believers, and sorry that their god was so unforgiving and exclusive and mean. But I also felt a kinship for the panic and anxiety - for the existential awareness of the transient nature of the reality of our physical world. Our challenge is to meet that transience as a gift and a joy - rather than a burden of worry.