5. Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough...

In the years that followed without a cure-all three-letter deity to fill the gaps in my understanding, I learned more of science and physics, of human nature and social interaction, even of theology than I ever thought could be known. I treated people with greater respect and decency, because I’d come to realize that we’re all we’ve got. I sorted through the scattered bits of myself and made use of the ones that mattered, because I knew that time for me was not infinite; and that we deserve better than to wait for the ending of ourselves to be ourselves. I realized that broken wings are mended with time; but a broken spirit is only ever healed when you are able to stand on the stone that brought you down and know that the view from there is better than any view on earth, if for no other reason than because it is yours alone, born from a unique triumph over that which many will say cannot, or should not, be conquered.

I found peace, cliché and metaphoric as it comes, wrapped and delivered to my front door on a godless platter.

Rather than perish – as more than one person swore to me it would – my happiness with life as it was, flourished. Moreover, I discovered that my sociological and political views were decidedly different than those thrust upon me by the tenets of Christianity. Some former ideas didn’t square up with my personal sense of morality. Some out rightly defied it. As a result, I often find myself wondering if the different sects of American civilization – with their even more divergent ideologies – would have come to the same conclusions on their own. If you could go back in time to strip Israelis and Palestinians of their respective faiths, would you have restored these many centuries lost to war and malevolence? If you could detract a handful of scriptures from a religious book, would you save a minority population from oppression? How far might science have already come, had it not been caught for so very long in the countering mire of institutionalized piety?

What would the world look like?

That of course, led to the more selfish and pressing question: how was the world now going to look at me?