Pain

They always say, “Things could get worse,” but you have to wonder if there is a point where nothing could get worse than it was right at that moment. If, by any crazy chance, you had reached the bottom of the “worse” barrel and there was no where else to go but up; up through the pain and misery, twice as difficult to pull through than the events that got you to the bottom. Maybe thinking about that is what got me here. Maybe the time wasted on thought is what made this moment cascade like children’s building blocks. Whatever the cause, I didn’t care. I don’t even remember how to care. All the feeling was numb, all the smells dull, all the colors fake, and all the sounds soft, and at that moment, I stopped. I stopped the tears. I stopped the sound. I stopped my thoughts and I stilled my being. I stilled by body long enough to quiet the aching pain pulsing in the pit of my stomach. The pain I knew would never subside. Pain I knew was insatiably feeding on every positive emotion passing through my breaking body.

Pain is a funny thing. Something you don’t think about til it’s gone, and when there is no pain, what do you feel? You’re supposed to fell pleasure, right? But no. Once the pain was gone, all I felt was the absence of it. I had to come to the conclusion of which was worse: pain or nothing? They always say, “Pain lets you know you’re alive,” but the absence of pain makes you aware of that fact. The absence of constant pain makes it painfully obvious that your existence is not a dream, it is not something that will one day be alright, it is something that will forever be gnawing at the core of your being wanting to destroy every thought, every happiness, and every petty burst of giddiness that comes from pleasure.

But why do I speak of pain? Why do I torment my thoughts with what torments me already? Because, to fully understand something, it is beneficial to study its opposite. True goodness is something we fallen human beings rarely come across in our lifetimes. When we do, the cynical, skeptical mindsets of the modern era warp the goodness into bad, but true goodness is a thing worth searching for. True goodness makes taking the pain worth it, makes hurt pleasurable and makes the ending exciting because you know that after all the pain and evil of the world, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

This is such a pragmatic view of the world, that to reach the beautiful end it is necessary to suffer injustice. But what can we ask for? Pain is a necessary result of what we want. We, as humans, want pleasure, we want goodness, but, because of the fallen nature of humanity, there is an opposite for everything.

Forward or Backward?

I ran. My feet methodically pounded the earth carrying me further and further away. I ran from nothing and from everything. The constant struggle between my true humanity and what I wanted to truly be moved my feet to soar. It was as if everything I feared was behind and everything I hoped was before and the only way to reach anything was to run. Running made the reach less distant. I never stumbled, I never slowed, and I never glanced behind. I was leaving the past headed toward the horizon; the glowing, distant, beautiful horizon. I ran until I reached it, and kept running. Running as if to catch the sun and hold it down never letting it sink behind the curvature of the earth taunting me with its ever present time-turning power. I ran until I could see nothing at all. Black night settled slowly over the world calling it to drift to sleep, calling it to forget what had happened and let the blackness consume it. Night did not prevail, and I carried on more carefully than before.

Every movement forward made the wish to go back more severe. I wanted the pleasures and flesh of life more than anything. They were so easy and simple. Why the soul needed its complications was difficult if not impossible to understand which is why I ran. I ran to escape both. I ran to escape the pleasures of humanity and the purity of the soul. I ran to escape into my mind, to debate the existence of this dichotomy, to understand the middle ground. I never found it, and I kept running. I did discover the choice. To go forward, running, trapped inside my mind for all eternity, or to stop, and make the decision to pick a path. The path forward would be near impossible, but with such an ethereal end. The path back would be of ease and simplicity; everything a human of base nature wants. But I am stopped by the idea of my own humanity. If I am so tempted by what is behind, how can I ever move forward with new beauty of life? I am finally leaving the infamous cave of reflected illusions, and I am seeing the beautiful yet painful Sun, but can I simply give up and turn back to my cave? I must seek the truth of reality and understand that my life before was a lie. Everything I have ever believed, seen, trusted is simply a cheap imitation of the perfected Form above. How can I not choose to go forward?