Thirst

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People have used the word abnegation when talking about me. Instinctively, I don’t like it. My sacrifice was already such a mistake: do I really have to be burdened with the cardinal virtue that leads to it?

I don’t see the slightest trace of that disposition in myself. People afflicted with abnegation tend to say, with a pride I find out of place, “Oh, I’m not important, I don’t matter.”

Either they are lying—and why tell such an absurd lie? Or they are telling the truth, and it is beneath them. To want not to matter is cowardice, misguided humility.

Everyone matters, to such a colossal degree that it is immeasurable. Nothing is more important than the very thing one claims is infinitesimal.

Abnegation implies a disinterested attitude. I am not disinterested, because I am a lever. I aspire to contagion. Dead or alive, everyone has the power to become a lever. There is no greater power.

Hell does not exist. If the damned exist, it is because there will always be killjoys. We have all met at least one of them: the individual who is constantly frustrated, chronically unsatisfied, the one who, when invited to a splendid feast, will see only the fare that hasn’t been served. Why should they be deprived of their passion for complaining at the time of their death? They are certainly entitled to make a mess of their own death.

The deceased also have the possibility to meet amongst themselves. I have noticed that they nearly always abstain from it. However intense their friendships or love affairs once were, when they are dead, they no longer have much to say to each other. I don’t know why I’m describing this phenomenon in the third person, because, in the end, it applies to me, too.

It’s not a matter of indifference, but another way of loving. It all unfolds as if the dead had become readers: their relationship with the universe is like reading. It demands calm, patient attention, and thoughtful decoding. All of this requires solitude—a solitude conducive to a flash of brilliance. In general, the dead are not as stupid as the living.

What is this reading that keeps us so busy once we have died? The book takes shape depending on our desire; our desire gives rise to the text. We are in that luxurious situation where we are both author and reader: writers who create for their own enchantment. No need of pen or keyboard when you are writing in the cloth of your delight.

If we don’t seek out encounters, it’s because they remind us of our individuality as living beings, something we no longer particularly desire. When he came to find me, Judas called me by my first name, which surprised me.

“Had you forgotten your name is Jesus?”

“Forgotten is not the right word. I’m just not obsessed with it, is all.”

“You don’t know how lucky you are. I think of little else: I betrayed you. I’m the bad guy in your story.”

“If you don’t like it, think about something else.”

“What else could I think about?”

“Don’t you have some pleasurable place to go to in your thoughts?”

“I don’t understand your question. I’m the man who betrayed Christ. How do you expect me not to be obsessed by that?”

“If that’s what you want, you can stew over it for ever and ever.”

“You see! You’re encouraging me to feel remorse!”

That’s not what I had said. I felt a strange emotion on discovering that misunderstandings could survive beyond death.

What remains of my time as a living person named Jesus?

On their deathbed, the dying often say, “If I could do it all over…”—and they specify what they would do all over and what they would change. This proves they are still alive. When you’re dead, you feel neither approval nor regret with regard to what you’ve done or not done. You see your life as a work of art.

At the museum, when you stand before a canvas created by a great master, you never think, “Now if I were Tintoretto, I would have done it like that instead.” You gaze at the painting, you take note. And just suppose that you actually were that famous Tintoretto once upon a time, you don’t judge yourself, you simply state, “That’s me, I can tell from that brushstroke.” You don’t wonder whether this had anything to do with good and evil, and the thought never even occurs to you that you could have done things differently.

Even Judas. Above all, Judas.

I never think back to the crucifixion. It wasn’t me.

I contemplate what I liked, what I do like. My trifecta is still working. Dying is no longer really newsworthy, but it’s been worth the detour. Dying is better than death, just as loving is much better than love.

The big difference between my father and me is that he is love, and I am loving. God says that love is for everyone. I who am loving, I see very well that it is impossible to love everyone in the same way. It’s a question of breath.

In English, the word is too simple. In Ancient Greek, breathing translates as pneuma: an admirable find to express the notion that breathing cannot be taken for granted. English, that eminently practical language, has only preserved, for use in everyday life, words like pneumatic.

When you’re dealing with someone you suspect you don’t like very much, you say that you cannot stomach them. This digestive malaise may then make it difficult to breathe in the presence of that bothersome person.

To use the word breathtaking about someone implies just the opposite: first your breath is taken away from you, then you breathe too much. You feel this hopeless need to breathe in the person whose presence knocks you off your feet.

Even though I’m quite dead, I still feel the dizziness of breath. The illusion is playing its part to perfection.

The one thing I do mourn is thirst. I miss drinking less than the urge that inspires it. A learned synonym for drunkard is dipsomaniac. Dipsa is Greek for thirst, but maniac, as far as I’m concerned, is a contradiction in terms, and one I was not in danger of deserving.

To experience thirst, you must be alive. I lived so intensely that I died thirsting.

Perhaps that is what is meant by eternal life.