chinese satellite - phoebe bridgers
i would love to believe in something. an entity bigger than me, a holy something, a god. i would love to have a religion to believe in. life seems much simpler when you are religious.
you get to blame all your problems to someone else. whenever someone disagrees with your horrible beliefs you pull out the religion card, epsecially if you are a christian, to support your ideas (even though they actually don’t agree at all with what you’re supposed to be a follower of). it seems so easy to be religious. you are able to take everything you do, everything you say, everything you believe and blame someone else, someone no one questions, someone that doesn’t exist. religion is a shortcut to avoiding accountability. i love it. religion gives you the opportunity to be the worst person in the world without it being percieved as your fault. you can be horrible but that’s not you don’t worry, you just follow your god(s)’ word.
i’m not saying that i also want to be the worst person in the world, not at all. i don’t want and would never turn racist or homophobic or into a misogynist because i am religious. who i am now wouldn’t. but what if i had grown up a believer. what if i was an orthodox? what if at that ripe age of 8 i hadn’t gone to church and questioned it? what if my best friend’s dad hadn’t died when i was 8? would i have gotten to my conclusion about god and religion?
in greek schools it’s mandatory that we go to church every few months. many times that’s our “cultural visit” of the month. on my third year of grade school my childhood best friend’s dad passed away. i knew him. he was my neighbor. he had given me my stiches some months prior. i started believing a lot for the first time in my life at that point. i wanted to believe. i wanted to believe there’s something after we die. i wanted to believe my friend and her family would see him again. i wanted to see him again and thank him for all the help he had given me and my family. in “chinese satellite” phoebe says
Because I think when you're gone it's forever
But you know I'd stand on the corner
Embarrassed with a picket sign
If it meant I would see you
When I die
that’s exactly what i was feeling, but i was 8, i didn’t know how to express it. he died a day after christmas. three days later i saw him in my sleep. i thought it was a sign. he smiled at me. he didn’t say anything. he just stood where he would always stand and smiled at me.
up untill easter i loved going to church because i wanted to believe. i wanted to believe that when i was there he could hear me. i wanted to believe that the church was the getway from my mind to his. around easter i realized that that was never true. i had this very significant moment in my life then. i remember sitting in my local church and praying to my friend’s dad. i tried to talk to him and i thought i did. i thought i had connected with him when i was in that very sacred place. but then i went home, and he wasn’t there. i went home and my friend still didn’t have a dad. i went home and nothing had changed. i never saw him in my dreams again. as an 8 year old who thought had solved grief and death and all the major sorrows in this life, these news were very dissapointing to me.
a year after he died i went to his memorial to be there for my friend. i saw his grave. there were candles behind a little glass door. they were leaking everywhere, they needED to be changed. my friend looked at them and she saw them burning uncontrollably. she started shouting “my dad is burning. somebody help, switch the candles, my dad is getting burned.” that’s the moment i made sure god didn’t exist. whatever the adults and the government WERE TRYING TO PASS DOWN TO ME was wrong because my friend’s dad was burning and he had been dead for a year and she was 8 years old. what god would let an 8 year old suffer like this? what god would let my friend suffer like this?
as i was growing older i kept getting more and more reasons why god doesn’t exist. i started learning about wars and genocides, how my mom was treated when she migrated to greece, i was meeting kids that had to immigrate to my country through the sea in life boats that couldn’t hold all the people that was on them. as i was getting more educated i started realizing that religion is all made up, like most things in this world. a man-made invension for power and control. human beings will always seek for a way to be more powerful, more dominant in this world. humans think they are entitled to everything. that’s our curse.
religion is the easiest way to control the population. its enforcement has been one of the most common reasons behind wars. let me rephrase that actually. when people of power want more land, more control, more everything, religion is the easiest thing to blame it on. it’s not about greed, it’s about religion. it’s not because of people thinking they deserve more and more and never being satisfied with what they have, it’s about god’s preach.
i would love to believe. i would love to be religious. it seems extremely easy to be brainwashed by a book and the government. i wish i could believe. i would do anything to believe if that meant my grandfather is living his best after death life. if it meant i will see him again. IF IT MEANT MY FRIEND’S DAD DIDN’T GET BURNED BECAUSE HE WAS ALREADY LIVING SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES. IF IT MEANT ALL THOSE INNOCENT KIDS THAT ARE GETTING KILLED DAILY ARE SOMEWHERE IN PEACE WITH THEIR PARENTS.
BUT I THINK THIS IS A VERY IGNORANT AND SELFISH WAY TO LIVE LIFE. WHY DOESN’T LIFE MATTER ENOUGH? WHY DO WE NEED RELIGION TO CONVINCE OURSELVES WE GET A SECOND CHANCE? NOBODY FUCKING KNOWS IF WE GET A SECOND CHANCE. WHY CAN’T WE VALUE LIFE, THE ENVIRONMENT, ANIMALS, FEELINGS, HAVING FUN, OUR PRECIOUS LIVES IN OUR FIRST TRY?
I GUESS IGNORANCE IS BLISS AND PEOPLE PREFER BEING IGNORANT RATHER THAN KIND.
vale