Eva Jaber ’28 (she/her) is a prospective English or international relations major. She is a member of the Cleftomaniacs, an a cappella group, an ESL tutor and hopes to encourage peace-minded advocacy on campus. Contact her at ehjaber@wm.edu.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
Four months ago, I got perhaps the weirdest, loftiest question that has ever been sent in to this satire advice column. I often wonder which issue of Eva’s Apple is my magnum opus. I’m frequently asked which issue is my favorite, and I can definitively say that “Eva’s Apple #8” is the one that I’m proudest of. My runt-of-the-litter older brother likes to remind me that nothing I’ve written has ever or will ever beat “Eva’s Apple #2.” For those who are unfamiliar, at the end of my second Apple, I propose a plan to get over your last situationship that involves letting seven Canada geese loose in your quasi-ex’s dorm room and implementing a foolproof psychological warfare plan to condition them to fear the wrath of an eighth, nonexistent goose. I think it’s that sort of deranged creativity that earns me my (I’m trying to find a way to put this nicely) utterly-friendless, entirely-charmless brother’s admiration and respect. So, when I got the aforementioned strange question four months ago, I knew that it would allow just the type of loose-screw generativeness that appeals to my greatest critic. This question is an opportunity to write my genetic comrade’s new favorite Apple. It’s only right for me to warn you, however, that this issue is not my magnum opus. In six weeks’ time, I will release an Apple that will blow your freaking mind. I have never created, nor will I ever create, anything else like it. The time will come for that. Until then, we’ll preoccupy ourselves with an odd and arguably unanswerable question from four months ago.
The question of the week is as follows:
“If God is real, then why does he let suffering occur? Also, is God real?”
Need I remind you that The Flat Hat is the official student voice of the Alma Mater of the Nation. This satire advice column is a deeply secular entity. This university is an institution meant to teach you how to think, not what to think. In the same spirit, as your trusted advice columnist, it’s my job to tell you what you should do, not what you should believe.
Still, dear reader, I will give you a nugget of wisdom for you to dip in a dollop of smarty-pants sauce and chew upon until the ridges of your brain have deepened and your neurons start to fire in a peculiar rhythm that sounds like “dah-di-di-di-dit dah-dah-di-di-dit” (which is “six seven” in morse code if anyone’s curious). I may not give you the answer you think you want, but I am going to give you the one I know you need. You’re welcome in advance.
I’m a kind and gracious advice columnist. I don’t just want you to listen to me; I want you to understand me. Thus, I’m going to walk you through my thought process here as we both seek spiritual clarity.
I was recently reading this book called “Why Poetry Matters” by Jay Parini, and two particular quotes that he highlighted caught my attention. The first was a Percy Bysshe Shelley quote that reads, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” The second is a George Oppen quote that claims, “Poets are the legislators of the unacknowledged world.” See how this slight change completely transforms what we think we understand, what we thought we understood? I aim to do the same thing that Oppen did to Shelley’s quote to this week’s question. The only difference is that I am, and I say this with the utmost humility, going to do it better.
Now, the original question is asking me to confirm or deny the existence of God. A common characteristic of many religions is that they each illustrate a unique conception of meaning beyond death, whether that be heaven, reincarnation or another possibility. What I am really seeing here is that this question-asker wants me to weigh in on whether there is some sort of grace, some kind of love, within and beyond life. In other words, the question that is really being asked is as follows:
“Do you believe in love after life?”
As promised, I will flip this still-unanswerable question on its head. I am about to crack this case right open. Our new and improved question, then, becomes this:
“Do you believe in life after love?”
This, my friends, is a famous Cher lyric, whom many have referred to as the “Goddess of Pop,” so don’t go saying I’ve lost the plot by abandoning the religious nature of the original question. It’s still very much there; you just aren’t reading deeply enough to see it. That’s a skill issue, not my fault. I spent the week leading up to this issue polling my friends to glean whether they believe in life after love. I approached this endeavor with an advanced methodology that involved ambushing them with the question during inopportune times, such as yelling after my friend as they rushed to a class or begging for my roommate’s input right before she drifted off to sleep. These tactics were, of course, to maximize my chances of getting a genuine answer from my test subjects. Haters might complain that I loudly booed survey participants when they offered an answer contrary to my desired result, to which I reply that I wasn’t upset because they disagreed with me; I was upset because they were objectively wrong.
I got some definitive yeses, and some passionate nos, but the most generative answers I got were definitionally contingent. What is life? Is it simply living or is life defined by how wholly it’s lived? What is love? Platonic? Romantic? Familial? My friend Julia thinks that love can morph into something new, that a life after love doesn’t exist because there is no life without loving something. My friend Mia thinks that love follows a sort of law of conservation of mass — that love cannot be created nor destroyed. So, then, there is no life after love to believe in because there cannot be life without it.
I choose to come at this question from a different angle. I am a woman of empiricism. The ads that I put out in “Eva’s Apple #2” and “Eva’s Apple #10” for a lifelong companion were utterly ineffective, so it’s high time I try something new. My DMs are no longer open, but applications are! If you want to test out whether life after love exists, you can apply to fall madly in love with me (you’re probably already almost there; fan behavior) and then have your heart subsequently (and perhaps irreparably) broken. After that, how about you tell me whether you believe in life after love. The deadline to apply is in six weeks’ time! After that I’ll be preoccupied with more important things than your feelings. Due to the high volume of applications my team is anticipating, I will only be reaching out if I am interested. Best of luck!!
What’s coming in six weeks? God only knows. Oh, and me. I know too. Not to brag, or anything.
