Zombie!

I hate zombies. I have never seen Day of the Dead, 28 Days, Dawn of the Dead, or any other zombie movie because I’m pretty sure I would scream like a little girl. My most memorable nightmares are of me trying to flee from zombies...if they catch me, I turn into one too! Once I had the very same zombie nightmare for about 10 nights straight! So, yes, I am terrified of zombies.

However, I was flipping through the channels watching TV and I saw a humorous beginning to a movie. You see this guy’s feet lumbering, you hear moaning, and a sub-human grunt. Just as I’m ready to flip the channel (zombie!), the camera pans up, and it’s this English guy waking up and walking to the bathroom. Hilarious. Turns out the movie was Shaun of the Dead. An English spoof of the Zombie genre. It takes horrifying zombie situations matches them up with this guy’s struggle to win back his ex-girlfriend and viola…one of the best comedies I’ve seen.

After watching Shaun of the Dead and laughing hysterically (and cringing in fear), I began to wonder why I was so afraid of zombies. Why is this mythical creature so repulsive and blood-curdling to me? I had always chalked it up to dead people walking around being just generally freaky. Though true, I began to see something bigger. Mythical creatures always represent something. They are symbols for the great, real-life forces that are arrayed against us. Jungian Psychology suggests that these images represent something deep in our conciousness...

Suddenly, it dawned on me: I’m afraid of zombies because they are the living dead. They are “alive,” but they are dead. They move around. They consume people. They do their thing, but really they are dead. That is what I fear the most. Thinking that I am alive, doing my thing, but really I’m just another walking dead, consuming others in my path. Perhaps the fiends of my nightmares are a mirror for my own soul screaming out what I fear most.

Thoreau in Walden puts it this way:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…”

First reading this quote was a pivotal moment in my life. At that moment, I saw so many people just existing. They slept, ate, consumed, went to a job to earn money, and they repeated that day after day. Marriages, children, and friendships were neglected. The true treasure of life itself seemed lost to so many. Here we are consuming while being consumed.

What could be more zombie? What could be more terrifying?

The Cranberries' hit song Zombie was a diatribe against all those who did nothing when Ireland was attacking and killing her own children with terrorism. Dolores' voice screamed out, "Zoawmbie...Zoawmbie...Zoawmbie, ie , ie, ie," accusing, condemning. Who could let the innocent die? Who does nothing in the face of such violence? Apparently, only those pretending to live.

Are you a zombie? Are you living for something or just pretending to live? Do you treasure life and live it to its fullest? When you see wrong does your life scream out against it? Are you truly alive?

I live because I choose to live. It’s a choice I make to flee the zombie existence, and I run and struggle and gasp to keep my life. To do anything other is worse than death.

I am terrified of becoming a zombie. I am terrified of living a meaningless existence. It haunts my dreams and my waking hours. For when I die, I want to have truly lived. I start this new year as I've started many: Determined to suck the marrow out of life.

It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of every man;
the living should take this to heart.
- Ecclesiastes 7:2

P.S. I would advise against hitting zombies in the head with cricket paddles.