DD...

...No, you didn’t offend me at all!

And I need to make a public apology to you if I appeared to be lecturing you! I like you — and Michael and everyone who’s participated in this thread!

I love the complexity of the different values and beliefs shared here. I’m mired in the muck and wallowing in diversity. Different experiences, different and unique thinking make us all so singularly human and I have to embrace and love the whole of humanity if I’m to fulfill my humanist beliefs.

I’m so very, very sorry that I offended you. That was never my intention. Never. Never.

Please reconsider leaving this discussion — I’m sure that I speak for all (and I’m the lone contributor here who embraces existential Nihilism) in saying that your contributions have been critical in provoking even greater thought put into our responses. I may disagree with you, but I love reading you. I know, I know, I know that, more often than not, I can come across as gruff but, as I said, I’m a marshmallow with an extraordinarily bizarre sense of humor that goes unappreciated (my folly!) most of the time. My fault.

(Yar. I am suffering — I blacked out again this morning and crashed my skull upon the linoleum flooring in my kitchen. I laugh at the 0-10 pain levels — can I have a 100, please? My body is shutting down and I can’t find a way to get the wheelchair prescribed quickly enough for my needs. I can’t find a method to navigate the complicated mess of pain relief without returning to a nursing home. If I were a dog, I’d have been put down by now. Yet with all of my complaints (and, lord knows, I hate complaining) I’m positively invigorated by the joy of dying! I’m actually, finally dying! I’ve had so many ‘3-6 month’ predictions, going back for 15-years!, that I scoffed at the ignorance of specialists... until, well, now. I can now, praise be!, feel the dying... and it’s beautiful. Amazing; such a cause for celebration! Don’t you see, within your beliefs and values, how, like St. Paul wrote, that I have fought the good fight and that I am winning the race and that I have, in my most twisted way, kept the faith? I genuinely believe that we’ve more in common in our values than not and this whole thing, this life, doesn’t mean that we must share the same beliefs to love one another? I’m babbling, I know; that’s what I do. I’m grateful for your warm wishes — I really am. I really am grateful.)

Please, please accept my sincere apology.