Badmovies.org Forum

....would you rather live out your life as it comes, or make a Mephistophelean bargain to have alternating years of absolute joy, and total sorrow, assuming there was no afterlife penalty to this deal?

For the record I think it's bad Monkey's Paw style mojo to mess with what would naturally unfold in your life, but then I have never been of the "fate/karma/joss/dharma/meant to be school of thought.

I do think if you read the Bible and believe in it then the only explanation for certain prophesied events coming to pass is that manipulation on a grand scale goes on, placing people in certain places (and somehow motivating them to go there) my default setting has always been events set off events kinda like we're all Plinko chips on some vast gameboard, flipping one way then the next because circumstances and mingled order and chaos compel us that way. It is impossible to have no influence on the world around us, or to fail to be influenced by it in turn.

Man proposes and Fate/God/Chance disposes, but it is hubris to think we control our own destiny, we only steer a bit here and there on a very treacherous track.

So if life is random and choice plays but a portion of it, then...to assume there would be a force mighty enough to manipulate your internal weather and set it to 365 days of bliss and then 365/366 days of hell....that'd re-write much of what we know about the universe, and would by my way of thinking be so frightening I'd not want to mess with  it, so....

I'd say no, I'll take my chances, thank you.

BUT 365 days of sheer joy alternating one year in two would also be far more absolute happiness than most of us will ever get left to our own devices and desires (quote, anyone?) so if someone were to take the deal, in a way I'd admire their courage and understand that.

But here is another thought: which would be more survivable, the year of bliss or the year of anguish? I'm not sure I'd say bliss since we seem to squirm when we're too happy. Noticed that?

(No, I'm not rambling, I'm free-associating. Remember, I am incredibly lost to ennui right now. In fact I am thinking about waking one of the kids up just so I can get him or her back to sleep and have something to do. One of the few torments I encounter in life is inactivity. I am an active person. A good thing and a bad, like the Arab wheat ear on the heel of the Godolphin Arabian in Marguerite Henry's novel King of the Wind. Loved it when I was nine.)

I'm with you - I'll take things as they come.  No deals.  Knowing, or thinking I or anyone else might know the future freaks me out too much.  And yes, too much joy is unnerving and I've always hated the idea that people that suffer are more deserving of happiness.

Agreed: I would also just like to have an idea of any bad things that are coming my way so that I could prepare for or avoid them.