No matter how low or hard I hit the ground, I have always found the resources to dust myself up and get on my feet and start walking again.
One, condescendingly, might think has been through enough to state “sure, it’s easy for you to say, you don’t know what pain/sufferance is all about”.
Just because your pain is different, it doesn’t mean is lesser or smaller or bigger. Pain is pain. Full stop. For the one that lives through it, either he loses someone to cancer, or he sees his daughter being slaughtered and raped with a gun barrel in some African country, or divorces and goes through a war, pain is pain. No one has the right to measure the amount of pain you are going through. Your pain is yours and yours only. In spite of all this human drama, however, I have witnessed with amazed interest how people are able to regenerate and create themselves permanently, like perfect dynamos.
A dynamo is another name for an electrical generator that produces direct current with the use of a commutator or, by extent, a forceful and energetic individual. In history, this concept of dynamism or self regeneration was found as the Phoenix bird or the Eternal Return.
Personally, the latter definition has been interested me for quite a while, every since I have come across Mircea Eliade and his famous History of Religious Ideas and the Myth of The Eternal Return. This myth basically states that the universe is limited in extent and has no starting or ending and the number of possible changes is finite, so sooner or later the same state will recur. If this theory is true, then we are doomed to repeat ourselves and our mistakes, as long as time is viewed as being cyclic and not linear, as we hope it is. Meaning, not only that all our mistakes will be repeated again and again, but all our pains, tears and tragedies will be relived endlessly.
If Peter Lynds and Ouroboros legend were right and the universe is a cycle which repeats itself an infinite number of times, we are pretty much FUBARED.
Also all our laughter, joys, good moments, the instants when our baby smiled at us for the first time, the moment we kissed our beloved for the first and last time, the moment we held his/her hand for the first or last time will be repeated. If we are a real dynamo, and we are doomed to be captive in the same temporary circle, then we have another chance to relive our happiness as well.
We are condemned to be happy.
5 comments:
Happy New Year,
Pain is pain and nobody knows my pain as I do. Trying to explain it is futile. Better to live with it and let it be with me, but keep moving forward because the moment you start thinking, creating stops. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Pain. Suffer. Regenerate. Begin Again. ---> Pain ----><
kindest,
michael
Happy New Year!
A mutual friend of ours pointed me to your blog. I thought I'd say hello and wish you and yours a Happy New Year!
I think an interesting intellectual exercise is to explore the root of pain itself. Where did it come from? Why do we experience it to the extent we do?
There are many books on the topic of pain. An interesting book that tries to address the theological problem of pain was written in the 1940's by a man who had some personal experience with pain. He tries to answer questions like: If God exists why does pain exist? Isn't God Love? And how can an all loving God allow pain to exist?
What makes pain all the more painful is not having a context to put it in. C.S. Lewis' book "The Problem of Pain" provides a context from a Christian point of view in understanding pain.
Here's a blog entry reviewing the book: http://homewardbound-cb.blogspot.com/2007/07/review-problem-of-pain-by-c-s-lewis.html
It doesn't seem that the actual text of the book is available online...at least I haven't been able to find it.
Anyways... have a great New Year!
Hello Michael, Steve
Happy New Year to you as well.
Yes this was pretty much my point. The idea of regeneration and the endless inner strength people find within themselves.
Thanks for your interest in my blog, Steve.
However, I think your comment is not really capturing the idea of my post. My topic was not about pain. The bottom line was the "eternal return" and quite a happy conclusion that since are doomed to repeat and relive our mistakes and pain and unhappiness, we have also the opportunity to relive our happy moments as well. That we are "condemned" to be happy as much as we are "condemned to be unhappy".
But, I do appreciate your comment and i am happy you did so. It keeps me on my literarily toes to see my readers are paying attention to details.
:-) Have a good year both of you.
Diana
Hi Diana,
Thanks for the reply. Sorry if I missed the point.
My point in my response was that even the painful moments in our lives move us forward. Painful events change us so that even if it were to happen to us again, it would happen to a different person and therefore the experience is not the same. The same is true for the happy events.
The concept of an Eternal Return can only be true if nothing changes on each spin through the cycle. But life is anything but a treadmill of good and bad events to be repeated over and over again. Instead our lives are paths to growth and transformation to a be a better person and to understand our place in a larger story.
I don't feel condemned to pain or happiness based on past experiences, but instead look forward to what's described in the Bible in Revelations 21:4 "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
What words..
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