JUDGMENT DAY BECOMING REPETITIVE

Commentary by Mark Langston

It started dramatically like this,
but after a few hundred thousand...

Judgment Day has always seemed like a big deal, but I’ve got to say that now that we are about 10 million people into it, it is getting pretty repetitive.

Sure, the first 300,000 or so are great, you know, exciting and interesting stuff. But somehow, around 500,000, it all becomes sort of predictable. You start saying, “Okay, and then she became a teenager and started to be mean and exclusive” or “Yep, and when he got that big promotion and everything was going smoothly he started to feel both entitled and afraid, and that is why he slept with that waitress in Denver.” In the first few hundred thousand there were still some surprises, but once you’ve done a million people you feel like you’ve pretty much seen it all.

I will add this: I’m glad I’m not up until we’ve done a few billion, because by then I’m sure no one will be paying attention except for the people who knew me. When this all started I was worried about having my entire life up on the Big Screen and having my sins shouted from the proverbial rooftops, but after you’ve seen so many sins, especially after you’ve seen so many predictable patterns, well, this whole thing starts to feel like some graduation ceremony that has gone on entirely too long. 

If there is one take away from the whole thing, I’d say it is that other people’s lives are somehow more different yet more similar than one could have known before. The whole process makes me wish I would have paid better attention to people, to their challenges and struggles, before I leapt to such incomplete judgments. Oh, and I wish that I could have maybe been a little more patient with myself, but that was really difficult when I believed that my sins and struggles were so unique and uniquely terrible. 

What I really wish now is that “day” only meant a 24 hour period—my butt really hurts and from what I can see this “day” will last as long as one of those creation periods!