Is the Bad Really Bad?
Art & Article 2024 June Eidition (Eng)
illustrated by. NamuIt has been nearly ten years since my daughter was a baby moving around in my womb, and nine since she was born. My daughter is like her dad. She is curious about lots of things and diligent when it comes to learning. When she was younger, she tossed tons of questions my way, trying to understand the world before her. I did my best to reply to each of her questions with a truthful and meaningful answer.
I remember hearing that one mother answered the question,“Why is the sky blue?” by saying to her child, “It has to be blue to help your eyes to feel fresh”! Although my replies were not at that level of brilliance, I did think hard and tried to answer sincerely whenever she had a question, no matter how mundane. Even after answering, I would replay the answer in my own head to see whether it was really the best answer I could give her. Every night, once my daughter is asleep, my mind flits from one answer I gave her that day to another, analyzing everything I said and thinking of things I could have said instead.
My daughter started third grade at school earlier this year. During her first and second years of elementary education, she was homeschooled. When she wasn’t going to school, she had more free time compared to other kids. She had more chances to have hands-on experiences as well, such as using a sewing machine, “helping” her dad with his work, and meeting people of all ages throughout the day. It seemed like she was developing a sharp sense of learning, but she was relatively unmotivated without the experience of peers learning alongside her.
There’s a saying “Knowing is Seeing”. During her homeschooling days, my daughter started having more questions and the depth of her questions increased. Perhaps thanks to her curiosity and innate intelligence, I had to confront how narrow my range of knowledge was. There were many times that I could only explain something to her simply and clearly after searching online and learning it myself. I confess there were several times that I felt that I was growing along with my child.
A few days ago, my daughter approached me while I was doing the dishes and asked another question.
Daughter: Mom, if there is something everyone in the world dislikes, and it never changes… then is it bad?
(I almost answered with a simple “Yes.” Instead, I paused for a moment and tried to think what on earth she was getting at.)
Me: Why, what’s on your mind?
Daughter: For example, stealing. Nobody likes it..
Me: Hmm, yeah, that makes sense. Except the thief himself, everyone won’t like it. So it must be bad.
Daughter: So, something bad is bad, right?
Me: Well, when you said everyone dislikes something, the word ‘death’ popped into my mind. But I think we cannot say death is absolutely bad.
Daughter: Why not??? If we are dead, we cannot see each other.
Sometimes I don’t know what to say when faced with her confident “Why not?”
There are moments when I think, “How can I explain something so obvious?” But this was different. I started my response with total sincerity because I’d always wanted her to be able to think critically and to see both sides of the coin.
Me: Hmm… Fortunately, as people get older, they often start to be less scared of death than they were when they were younger. They gain courage and wisdom over time. Also, there are a lot of people who believe dying is the process of moving to another existence or world.
Those people try to live life fully as part of getting to a better place when they die. They work hard and try to do good things for other people as well. There are some people who believe they can meet their loved ones again in heaven, too. For those people, death cannot be absolutely bad, can it? Because knowing they will die helps them make the effort to live a better life, knowing they only get one chance at finally reuniting with the people they loved so much, and with the Eternal Creator who will call them back to himself on their last day on earth.
Maybe she didn’t want quite that much to think about, because she quickly hurried back to her own room.
I had been afraid of death for a very long time. I didn’t expect any other layers or dimensions of reality to open up after I died. I thought the essence of the person just disappeared at the moment of death. An afterlife was just a concept that limited and desperately grieving human beings came up with to comfort themselves. An ultimately unhelpful, albeit persistent, meme passed down to us from more credulous and superstitious ancestors.
As my daughter walked away, I remembered giving birth to her. Ironically, the moments of birth and death are similar to each other. In each case the person is unwillingly delivered from a familiar, comfortable place, to an unknown place.
The world that a baby knew for the first 9 months was his mother’s womb and the world that we know before death is our earthly existence: our home, our favorite spots to relax, all the places where we are accustomed to spend time in our daily lives. Just like babies in the womb, we cannot know where we are going or when we will be born into a new life. However, one thing we can be sure of is that everyone will go at the time and date appointed for him from all eternity.
I hope death will no longer be something too scary to think about and accept for you. I really wish that you and I can live our daily lives in such a way as to prepare us to bravely encounter death when that day comes, rather than just being afraid of it I dare to wish that this world would become a better place if we remember these two simple things: “Others are also just as precious as we ourselves are, because we are all living human beings made in the very image of Almighty God” and “We might meet the people who are around us today in another world after our death.”
ⓒ Art&Article 2024
Art&Article 2024 is trying to capture the moments in our daily lives that inspire us. We try hard to understand the lesson of our experience and share it with you. Hopefully my stories can touch your heart and it helps the world we all live in to become more kind to each other.
10% of profit will be donated to a Children's Total Medical Care Center named "Dotori House" in Seoul, South Korea (82-2-2072-1758).
Writer : Haekang (River of Wisdom)
Illustrator : Namu
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E-Mail : riverofwisdom2525@gmail.com
