Yesterday. Yesterday I was feeling somber. Today, today I am also feeling somber. Someone I knew, you could call a long-past friend, was facing a great pain and I was torn. They would feel that great pain tomorrow, today, I don’t know for how long. Yesterday I said hello to an old friend -current acquaintance- funny how things turn out. She was doing so well, happy with her life and how it was moving. Hearing of her life, though it was condensed in just a handful of words, wrought me a moment of joy. The previously mentioned person, my long-past friend, had caused her great pain not to long ago. It feels as if it was a long time but it wasn’t. What is a long time?
On the surface yesterday could be perceived as a textbook example of our westernized and bastardized ideal of “Karma.” Things come back to you, it is only fair. The ones who cause pain should be forced to feel pain, isn’t that how it should be? Yet I felt hollow inside. Yesterday wasn’t a victory against human evil, it was a victory for human pain. On some level I know the pain he is going through, and on another level I don’t. Sure, the similarities are there, but the context is different, the people are different, the histories are different. All I know is that pain is the universal equalizer. What he is feeling yesterday, today, tomorrow, isn’t fair, it isn’t fucking retribution, it is the antithesis of retribution. We often forget, when living in out social microcosms, that pain permeates throughout social connections. To find cosmic justification within a painful event through the past actions of one person, the only one you know to be directly affected, is monstrous, dimwitted and self serving. As such, to a long-past friend, I am sorry for your loss. I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone, not a soul. Pain, it nullifies us all, if for one heart wrenching moment; that body laying in the ICU.
So how do we find retribution? Remember that old friend, current acquaintance? She is happy now, enjoying her life and the path she has taken. Her happiness, not her ill will, is the proper retribution. I doubt she has forgotten the pain she felt under his influence, my long-past friend, nor do I know or care if she has forgiven him, but she has let the pain slip from her life, it no longer controls her as it once did. It may not taste as sweet as the revenge we often see in movies, and it very much doesn’t feel “fair” as when pain begets pain, but the world isn’t fair, it isn’t ruled by cosmic balances and cyclical patterns. The only balance we can create (find?) is within ourselves, to search for such balance within the external world would be foolhardy, to ask for comfort in something beyond our control. As a side note let me ask, which one of us truly want such control? To mould the world around us to fit our preconceived notions of balance? I for one believe that to have such control would pollute and corrupt not only my mind and soul but the black beauty which makes the world so appealing (appalling?).
So, to my old friend -current acquaintance - thank you for showing me in a short period of time, the balance found within yourself. I am sure you have shown it before, but I failed to see, and for that I am sorry. I am proud of you, what you have accomplished, and what you will accomplish. To my long-past friend thank you for showing me the humanity that exists within us all. Perhaps because I didn’t give you the chance -perhaps you didn’t deserve that chance- I didn’t get to witness such humanity under more ideal circumstances and for that I am sorry, but know that your pain, as harsh and un-wielding it is, will not beget pleasure from me, nor pain. It begets sympathy, and has taught me a little a-bit about myself.
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