The Rain God in Me

There is a common myth that I've had told to me that on his or her deathbed an atheist will often "“repent" and shout out to god. Often this is either used in conjunction with the broken Pascal's Argument in an attempt to sway me or it is used in conjunction with "“magic" and placed in the same mystic realm as "“out of body experiences" and "“near-death experiences", which is to say that they sound to me an awful lot like illusions and hysterias.

No, for me, the place I will most likely seek comfort on the deathbed isn't "“God" or any other external deity. I'm afraid that the obvious place for me to go is a familiar place called solipsism. Solipsism, the belief that I alone matter, is something that has always been on the edge of my thoughts. Ultimately it's a combination of natural skepticism and paranoia. At the end of the day it's easy for me to say, "I'm not sure anyone else exists outside me," and fall asleep in that simple comfort. Come death, I think the temptation would be too great to slip into those thoughts one last time. Solipsism isn't exactly egotism, at least in my opinion. In fact, the loneliness that tinges it can alone be ego-shrinking.

In my own thoughts I've dealt with solipsism for a long time. The small belief I carry as a keepsake of some of my more solipsistic periods of childhood, as a small mini-solipsism, is the belief that I am a Rain God. I remember so many afternoons when I was disturbed and angered over some outside game and my only friend and companion would be the Rain-- its tears would overpower my own, and in so doing ...