Mondays are hard for me. It was Monday once again, and I found myself wandering aimlessly through the desolate streets of the too-late night, overanalyzing and dwelling on dreamt-up scenarios of what my life could have become during the past week, when a young boy approached me and asked me to buy him some beer. At first, I said "no way." What is it with kids and beer anyway? The kid shook his disappointed head and had turned to go when I reached out and stopped him. What the hell, I thought, remembering how bored I was growing up; kids need release from life's burdens too. So I found myself waiting in line at the local grocery store with a six-pack of cheap beer resting lightly on my hip.

The man in front of me launched into a diatribe on the lousy state of the world. He had just lost his job for the second time, he informed me miserably. He blamed his boss, his wife, his overcrowded life. I tried to look interested, but I couldn't keep my mind from wandering. My life sucked as much as his. Why should I care if he lost his job again? I was not going to give the poor bastard any sympathy. I plastered a fake, pretending-like-I-care smile on my face and proceeded to dwell on my dreamt-up scenarios of other people's lives. I don't know when my fascination with the imagined world began. One day it just became more pleasant to reflect on what could be rather than what is.

My thoughts once again spiraled inward and I began to think about the book I was currently plodding through (yes, yet one more attempt at dodging reality), Life after God, an insightful story about a divorced man and his quest to find meaning in his life. The author, Douglas Coupland, writes of his struggle to find value in his dysfunctional family, his wife's sudden dissatisfaction with their marriage, his sister's drug problems, alcoholic friends, and a meaningless job. He pens stories of his attempts to console himself with all the things that are supposed to make the "postmodern" person happy: material gains and physical pleasures. But repeatedly, Coupland finds himself lost, walking under the clear starry sky on an empty desert road, hungry, lost, angry, and alone. He realizes then that his generation - our generation - is the first to be raised without God. He wonders if this is the reason for the daily hell he endures. I wondered if this was also my reason for escaping into my mind and living inside myself rather than in the seemingly chaos-filled physical world.

At one time, Western society was based on belief in God. God controlled people's lives. He took and gave as He saw fit, and nobody dared to question His motives. Through a progressive understanding of science and a period of "enlightenment," we emerged from this God-dependent society and removed His centrality from our lives. Society began to view Him as a watchmaker who intervened only when necessary until one day, society just stopped thinking about Him at all. From this emerged new Postmodernist era, an era that no longer has any use for an almighty, all-controlling God. Ambiguity gained popularity. Absolute truth exited through the back door. Relativity entered, and along with it came a chaotic and unacknowledged fear that grips our world.

As postmodernists, we tend to be well-educated homeowners who are well-employed. We have spouses or partners, families or dogs. We live exceptional middle-class lives, and yet we are haunted by a dark void in our lives. The postmodernist has all the pleasures of his world, but at the end of the day is left empty and unsatisfied. Our lives remain confused as the material things we put our faith in continually let us down. We search for self-fulfillment, for some sense of control. We want to think that we are in control, but the missing element, the key to personal happiness remains elusive. Our books are filled with worms, eating out the pages, slowly and deliberately. Weeds grow through the floorboards of our homes. The walls crumble. Our jobs are replaced by computers and immigrants willing to work for less. One day, we realize that we have nobody to blame for our dissatisfied lives but ourselves. We hate it because we don't understand it and have nowhere to turn for answers. For we have been raised without a God.

Prior to the eighteenth century, all of these failings would have been blamed on a supreme being. Society believed that God could unleash his wrath at any given moment, decimating the world at his will. The people did not necessarily understand the whys of God's actions, but they could find solace in knowing it wasn't entirely their fault. God was both in control and to blame. The burden of responsibility was not ours. Postmodernists, however, do not have this luxury. When things fall beyond our control, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Then, one day, the postmodernist discovers what it is he or she has been searching for all his or her life. He gazes through the car window as his car plunges over a cliff, and, in a moment of suspended silence, sees the fireflies dancing on the calm surface of the water before his car crashes headlong into the deep, deadly pool of ice cold water. At this moment he realizes he is but a small piece in a grand game played by something much greater than he. He is the pawn, and the chessmaster is some supreme being - dare I say God - commanding the movements of his life, commanding his car to sink deeper into the murky water, commanding the steel of the car to imprison his body between the wheel and the seat, slowly pushing the air from his lungs, the life from his body. It is at that moment that he realizes that he alone cannot save himself, yet he knows not to whom to cry out. For he has been raised without a God.

The postmodern age has forced us to face a struggle that no society before us has encountered. We must find peace and contentment in a world ruled by chaos, a world without absolute standards of truth, without absolute right and wrong by which to measure our morals and to guide our way. People and self are supposed to fill the void in our aching, empty hearts. When that fails, as it inevitably will, we turn to alcohol, drugs, sex, and money. We feel we are in charge of our own destiny and happiness, but we aren't happy. We aren't in control. We are plagued by a nagging fear of death and the knowledge that it will get us eventually.

It is this fact alone, the inevitability of death, that forces us to admit defeat. There is a greater power controlling our lives, something with the ability to decide if we will live or if we will die. As postmodernists, we spend our lives refusing to acknowledge a higher being; yet when that being decides our time is up, we know not on whom to call.

Postmodernism is an age where God exists only for those who are too late to call on Him. We spend our lives trying to outsmart death and earn control of our lives, and yet we end up beaten down, confused by the inexplicability of why we can't stay in control. The voids we try so hard to fill are left empty and become pointless when we face the reality of dying. Coupland ends Life after God by stating simply that he is of the generation raised without God, and now he realizes that all he ever needed was just that: God. He didn't want to wait to find God until he is on his way out. For him the meaning of life became obvious.

Is the answer really that simple? I doubt it. Still, the concept kept my mind occupied long enough to weather the diatribe from the disgruntled man in line and pay for the kid's beer. I hope he enjoys it. Personally, I prefer vodka. Skyy vodka - with a twist of lemon.