it seems almost sadomasochistic. feeling the most life through depictions of others' pain...but it's real. it's like pricking yourself just to see if you're still capable of bleeding. if there's any left.

i think it's partially because it has a universality. no one can look at a person in a given situation and truthfully say, "i know exaclty how he feels," but we've all felt pain. we all know what it is to wish more than anything to just be somewhere else at some other time. we've all done things we wish hadn't, and we've all had experiences we wish we'd never been forced to have. we can all look back at times when we wanted to disappear, or lash out, or fall apart in someone's arms, or go to sleep and not wake up. in that sense, it's as real to all of us as it is to any of us. ask not for whom the bell tolls.

it sounds a little backwards, but somehow it rings true: pain deepens our experience of life. as dumas put it, "he who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. we must have felt what it is to die...that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life."

seeing the pain of others then gives us perspective, and we can be grateful for what we, after all, have not had to experience. it's not inhumane, and it's not wishing suffering upon the other; rather, it's the pain of the other person serving its positive purpose - enlightenment of the others whom it touches, allowing them to experience a piece of the relief that the victim may eventually have.

it's a reality, and the only ones who are immune are the worst off of all - those who have short-circuited themselves, those unmoved by sunrise, mountain, sunset, birth, love, and death. the escape isn't worth it. we must face it, come hell and high water - and come they will. we haven't made it this far by succumbing to our pain, but by channeling it until its own unique nature becomes useful to us and others as we see what our experiences have allowed us to create - without fail, something that enriches the life of at least one other person. with each person we affect, our own lives grow in importance exponentially. we must do all we can to drag, perhaps kicking and screaming, the purpose from our pain.

a brief and terribly undescriptive return - 10.28.04
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- - 07.30.04