369 — Immortals and Gnats and Assholes

There are irritating gnats about as I push my cart along the aisles and politely excuse myself to the immortal souls as I navigate their traffic. The immortal souls I pass have their own carts, too, and I see that they are in varied states of filling.

Half-filled. Almost empty. Very full. I note that some immortal souls even need a second cart when their carts runneth over. All of them are swatting at gnats.

The wheels on the carts are uneven and squeak terribly, like these corporeal vehicles in which ride our immortal souls. As such, we are continually distracted by these trivialities that are our lives — lovers' quarrels, financial struggles, estrangements and reconciliations, wars and famines, and on and on.

Mere distractions.

We put them in our carts along with the Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, bananas, and Diet Cokes on sale. Do I need milk? I ask myself.

One immortal soul strikes my foot with one of her cart's wheels.

"Oh!" I cry, grasping my ankle to splint the pain.

It didn't go by her unnoticed: it was overtly disregarded. Rude. She never even looked back.

"Excuse me!" I shouted at this immortal soul.

"C'mon," the immortal soul retorted, "that didn't hurt. Don't be such a baby! My goodness, you're not bleeding. There aren't any broken bones. I mean...deal with it!"

"It's just common courtesy," I said to the immortal soul.

That's when the immortal soul called me an asshole.

My immortal soul...an asshole? Get away little gnat, I thought, categorizing comparatively, identifying, and sorting out such a triviality for an immortal soul as mine. Like what I said about the immortal soul who cut me off on my way here and then flipped me off. And the last immortal soul in the men's room who had pissed all over the toilet seat.

"Y'know," I told the immortal soul, "you're right. Not a big deal."

"Sarcasm?" the immortal soul asked, swatting a gnat away from herself.

"No, not at all. I just overreacted. Let's wipe the slate clean and go about our shopping," I offered.

Simple as that.

I turned my cart around, so I didn't catch the immortal soul's reaction.

I look around at the immortal souls in this grocery. This isn't a grocery in some afterlife. Not some 7-11-Heaven. Not some clearance sale in Hell. My immortal soul has a body that needs groceries and BTUs and miles per gallon. These needs are my mortal needs that are to my immortal soul as the distractions of a droning gnat are to my ear.

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously — no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory