David McElroy

When I launched this site three years ago today, the intended audience was only one person. Everything was written for her — in the hopes that she would find it and come back into my life. My hopes were rewarded. Sort of.

She came back into my life — in and out, back and forth — for most of the past three years. She was an avid reader of the site almost from the beginning. Then she became a regular commenter, first using a pseudonym and then using her real name (and a goofy picture with a wig).

She’s no longer a reader here and no longer part of my life. The details don’t really matter that much at this point. The psychology of what happened is actually very interesting, but it’s not in her best interest that the full story be told, so I won’t.

The only reason I tell you this story is to say that I started writing here with a surface-level purpose — which was quite real and honest — but always with a deeper and more important underlying purpose. Now that underlying purpose is completely gone, and I’m not sure anymore what my goals here are.

I haven’t been writing very much for months now. For nearly two years of the site’s existence, I wrote at least one article almost every day. For a long stretch of time, I also had a second article each day — written by the “staff monkeys” — with links of the day. I went through a lot of changes as a result of this experience, and it’s affected what I’m willing to write.

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I went to see the new movie “Moms’ Night Out” Friday. This family-friendly comedy isn’t something I’d normally see, but the film was shot in Birmingham by local directors and producers, so I wanted to see how many locations I recognized and how I liked their work.

I enjoyed seeing local streets and buildings that I know well, so I’m glad I went. I’m not really the target market for the movie, but it will probably do well for a low-budget family comedy (even though the reviews have been pretty brutal).

When I got home, I happened to put something down on the mantle above my fireplace. When I picked it up a couple of minutes later, I stood there for a minute and stared at some things I normally forget are even there — the awards that my one and only short film won almost 10 years ago.

I stood there and just stared, as though I was seeing them for the first time. And I berated myself once more for not making anything since then.

I shot “We’re the Government — and You’re Not” in December of 2004. Post-production was finally finished by the beginning of June 2005 and I started entering it into film festivals. Over the next 18 months or so, it was shown at 20 festivals and won five awards. In addition to U.S. festivals, it was screened in Canada, England, Australia and New Zealand.

Although it was my first film and I bumbled my way through the process at times, it was more successful than I ever dreamed it could be. It’s been seen on YouTube by close to 350,000 people since then.

As I stood there looking at a few of the awards Friday evening, I wasn’t sure whether to feel angry or ashamed for not having done another film. I saw myself as a filmmaker at the time. I have at least half a dozen scripts at various stages of development, ideas that I’m happy with and think would be good films. So why haven’t I done anything else?

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I’m afraid of dying. I suspect most people are, but it’s not something we talk about much. I find that every time I’m forced to think about death, it makes me more eager to think more intentionally about life.

There’s nothing in this world more certain than death, but there are few things that most of us would more strongly prefer to avoid even thinking about, at least for ourselves. I presume it comes from the unspoken fantasy or delusion that we’re going to live forever. Nobody really believes that, but we sometimes act as though death doesn’t exist if we don’t acknowledge it for ourselves.

Two things made me think strongly about death over the weekend.

First, I saw a movie over the weekend that deals with death and the afterlife, and it left me thinking a lot about the subject. The movie was “Heaven is for Real.” If you believe in an afterlife, you might enjoy the film. If you only believe in a material world and that consciousness ends with death, you would have no interest.

Second, I finally listened to last week’s episode of the public radio show, This American Life, which was about death and taxes. The segment about death dealt with what it’s like to be around those in hospice care — what’s it like to be the dying person, what’s it like to be family of those people and what’s it like to work with them. The stories were sobering. (I encourage you to listen to the segment.)

As a Christian, it’s easy for me to say, “Yeah, I believe I’m going to heaven and there’s nothing scary about death,” but that’s far too simplistic. It is for me, anyway.

There’s nothing that could be more terrifying to me than the idea of ceasing to exist. If I believed that I would cease to exist — my consciousness would be no more — I would find life and morality to be pretty empty in whatever time I had left. Other people believe in a purely material world and accept the idea of the end of their own existence and find ways to say life and morality have meaning. I don’t understand their way of thinking — as they don’t understand mine — but I only point it out to say that we all find beliefs that give us whatever we need to continue to exist where we are.

Materialists would say that those who believe in life after death have fooled themselves in order to give our lives meaning so can live today. Those of us who believe in the spiritual world see the materialists as contradicting themselves, because if there’s no ultimate meaning and no life after the human body dies, everything here is meaningless, in our view.

I’ve always found it interesting that in Paul’s letters to churches in the New Testament, he referred to us as having “hope” of a life in heaven after death. Although I’ve heard it interpreted in various ways, it always struck me that maybe Paul wasn’t so certain about exactly what happened after we died. If that were the case in some way, I’m with Paul. I don’t know what happens.

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