Reset
December 28th, 2006
Loss, Mothering, Spirituality
Christine got a Tamagotchi pet for Christmas. (For the unenlightened, these are digital creatures that live in a plastic keychain-sized disc.) She had her pet in hand all morning. Apparently the thing needs regular feeding, interaction, and even cleaning. When she neglected her pet for too long, it made a mess on the floor (hooray for virtual poop.)
At one point she flipped the disc over and showed me a tiny button lodged deep into the plastic casing–the kind you’d need a very thin screwdriver to push. “If my pet dies, we can push this reset button,” she explained.
Reset??
I was about to launch into a tirade about how we’ve been ruined as a society if we think that life, even digital life, can be revived so easily. (Thank you, Tom and Jerry. And Roadrunner. And… oh, never mind, the list is too long.) What about responsibility? And accountability? And grief?
But then a tear-stained Elizabeth approached me. She had just discovered her hamster, Rocket, curled into a cold, furry ball in the corner of his cage. I went downstairs to see the evidence. Oh dear.
“Why did he have to die on Christmas?” she sobbed. I hugged her and murmered sympathetic words for a while. Then my wise-counselor streak took over.
“You know, in a way it was good timing,” I said.
She asked why.
“Because today we’re celebrating the birth of Jesus. And that reminds us that Rocket is still alive–his spirit is scampering around somewhere up there. And his little furry body will come alive again, someday.”
She sniffed and nodded, and sniffed some more. I thought for a while about Christ’s power to throw tragedy into reverse. Errors, sins, even death. All we harm, all that harms us, all that perishes in any of a hundred different ways, will be repaired and revived through love.
Thank God the universe has a reset button.
