On the Heights of Despair

15 years ago I lived in a small

apartment that was next to a busy

four-lane road where cars traveled north

to south I wanted to die so I ran from

my apartment into the road I imagined a

car would probably break my legs first

sending my body into the path of another

automobile then I would be in great

torture and very bloody against the

black concrete with its yellow stripes

but within one half of a second a hot

rubber tire would run over my skull and

my skull would explode like an

overcooked pee on a China plate it

seemed very easy and it was appealing

and to begin this process I would first

need to place myself at the very last

possible moment in the path of a car but

I was unable to do so the headlights

were crisp and yellow from some distance

and when they approached the cars became

blurs of red black and silver which were

more threatening than I had previously

imagined I could feel the hurricane wind

of the cars on my face I could hear the

noises and the horns like screams of

Machinery from very close the cars

traveled at 45 or 50 m per hour which I

had never considered as particularly

fast until suddenly 45 or 50 mph seemed

very fast I had a fantasy of being

struck by a car but the reality of such

an event was proving very very different

I now realize I was only waiting into

this sea not plunging into it entirely

it would have been very easy to stand in

the way of a car and die but I found

myself maybe pushed by some greater

desire for survival to move into the

unoccupied Lanes as each machine drove

past me I returned to my apartment very

much alive with a strange resolve of

feelings the type of sadness which

brings one to this precipice is how I

imagine it may be to stand under one of

the great waterfalls of New England or

Appalachia it is a pain which surrounds

a person and penetrates so deeply that

one is paralyzed to act a party May

scream at the individual to move from

the waterfall without knowing that the

person is unable to do so the weight and

force of the water is so spectacular

that the body does not have the strength

to flex its musculature in any

meaningful or impactful way and so the

individual must only and can only resign

the M themselves to the desires of the

water which crashes onto the self it is

a drowning by paralysis I have indeed

grown much taller in the years since my

incident and I no longer stand under

this

waterfall the last Messiah is a short

essay written by Peter vessel zapa the

essay is of the philosophical sort and

is more concerned with the trajectory of

humanity rather than that of the

individual but in it zapa makes an anal

ology which I believe functions very

well for the individual he points to the

Irish elk a mammal from an earlier era

which grew the largest antlers in the

Animal Kingdom at 3.65 M across the elk

grew its antlers so large that it was

unable to hold its own head up and thus

unable to feed properly species

ultimately went extinct due to the

massive antlers it had evolved this is

often like The Human Condition for the

individual we have such capacity for

empathy and sensitivity that the result

can be self sabotage a flower dies or an

eagle takes a squirrel and we feel pain

for things that do not feel pain

themselves scorned by a lover or a

friend we are struck by bouts of emotion

which may fall outside the bounds of

rational thought often when we feel pain

there exists some more mechanical

logical and ostentatious voice which

proclaims that everything could always

be worse if we cut ourselves on paper we

may be reminded of the people who have

limbs severed by giant Machinery when we

have little money we consider the

individuals with no money if we erode

into a depressive State there is an

idiotic notion that we should be

comforted by having a roof over our head

or by the fact that we were not born

Starving in Dar fur or some other

distant corner of the third world but of

course this sort of argument does very

little good suffering is something which

happens internally it is affected and

moved by external forces perhaps but the

phenomena which transmute these events

into pain are internal what hurts he may

not hurt she this is made plainly

obvious when we consider that the

world's sufferings do nothing to comfort

our own people like to say that misery

loves company and maybe this is true but

company does not heal Misery the pain of

the world's poor does not alleviate our

own woes we do not smile when others

frown we do not exalt one other's scream

if anything maybe the opposite is true

we feel empathy and the sadness of the

world becomes the sadness of the

individual there is too no true zero for

pain a man cannot live in a Utopia no

matter how perfect any things may be we

will always feel pain when we are at our

most satisfied and content in life we

still feel sorrow over this or that so

to treat pain and suffering like some

objective measurable quality of life is

surely a foolish

Pursuit pain is too made Difficult by

its tendency to elude

vocabulary how often has the depressed

individual been prompted by some version

of what do you have to be sad about or

look at X Y and Z qualities of your life

why should you be in sorrow these are

bad questions because they have no

answers some unique sorts of pain are so

great and so large that they cannot be

captured by language in a turn of irony

the human mind which created our

language is unable to produce rhetoric

which act accurately categorizes this

most serious of pain so we are left

quite alone unable to communicate our

suffering to anyone and even unable to

communicate it to ourselves we can feel

it and we can see it all around us but

words do not exist to match the pain so

we suffer even greater in solitude there

in solitude is where we know our pain

most accurately but it is cruy where our

pain strikes the hottest and most

intensely there even Joy reminds us not

to feel joyous but of the thing which we

cannot find it is a topshelf item in a

store Out Of Reach but tremendously

visible the word trauma has been used in

modern parlaments maybe to the point of

exhaustion I once looked diminutively at

the word and when I heard people

Proclaim trauma I recoiled with

agitation and exhaustion but I have

realized the concept of trauma remains

true and real regardless of how casually

that word may be thrown around I must

also consider that trauma is part of

pain and so it is just as subjective as

that concept trauma plays a very mean

hand to its sufferer it does not impact

only the things which are immediately

relevant to the traumatic pain instead

it can fundamentally realign one's

wholesale perception of the world this

sort of pain forms a giant provos

between the emotional and the rational

sides of the spirit a person may feel

that life is generally a good and safe

place that is not populated by monsters

so if that person is the victim of some

singular event wherein Humanity shows

its cruelty and violence they are left

with a fundamental Rift in how they

perceive the world if the world is X why

did why happen this can call into

serious question all that we feel and

know about the world in which we live

about the nature of humanity suddenly a

person is stricken not only with the

pain of the event but with the pain of

disillusion the pain that perhaps on a

very fundamental level they do not know

or understand the world the concept of

trauma has a particular enemy of thought

in the English language people like to

say what doesn't kill you makes you

stronger sometimes maybe but I'm

reminded of a dolphin which has its fin

severed by a boat boat propeller the

dolphin may continue swimming and the

wound May heal but the dolphin is not

stronger it is weaker it cannot hunt so

effectively it cannot swim so quickly

each time it hears the familiar Roar of

an outboard motor even at distance it is

fractured and hides to cover things can

hurt humans and make us weaker too

wounds of the flesh must heal or a human

will die of blood loss or organ failure

wounds of the spirit do not have this

quality they do not need to heal we can

go on through life limping and cowering

and even the most vague cacophonies like

the dolphin hides from his

boats we often strive to arrange life in

a way which protects us from pain this

is understandable and maybe even natural

but it is also an impossible task to be

protected from pain we must understand

that suffering is unavoidable we will

all endure it in our lives and to seek a

painfree world is a meaningless search

consider maybe a wooden boat which has

had dozens of holes drilled into its

structure and it laps in the tide if we

plug one hole more water pours through

the rest if we plug two three or four we

only increase the pressure of the water

which pours into the boat like the salt

water will always seek these holes pain

too is Unstoppable in its cunning

certainly we should not actively seek

pain or Champion suffering or Envy those

in sorrow we also must not abandon our

brothers or sisters in moments of Crisis

but we should recognize that suffering

is an inexorable part of the human

condition to live is to feel many things

and one of them is pain but pain is

neither bad nor good it is instead an

ecosystem which at once contains Decay

and

growth I do not agree with the Hardline

notion that pain is good that suffering

makes us better but I do believe that

being a quintessential piece of life we

should seek for and identify the

benefits of pain we too often regard

feelings of pain as weakness as if these

Sensations are relegated to only a few

among us this is of course false so we

must find something to do with our pain

we must identify how it holistically

impacts our condition pain is like a

stone we are forced to carry and so we

would be best served not too langu only

in obligation but instead we may see if

this Stone can be used for other

purposes in his essay the pallative

society contemporary writer bang chulan

discusses the role of pain he points to

many of the beauties of pain which I do

think are real pain is love and love is

pain It Is by accepting the potentiality

of pain that we can enter into life's

most fulfilling relationships further we

know these relationships are true and

fulfilling by their capacity to enact

anguish bong Chul notes everything which

is true is painful with our loved ones a

rift or even separation which causes

suffering shows that the relationship

bursts with truth the seams of the world

are revealed to us by pain the things

which we love are those same ones which

cause us the most pain where we can

suffer we can feel life the potentiality

for pain is like a barometer of Truth

where there can be no pain there can be

no happiness I challenge the viewer here

to imagine something truly worth doing

which is simultaneously incapable of

causing

anguish pain draws the anatomy of Our

Lives we are able to understand what is

most important by What Hurts the Most

when it is maimed or

severed pain too reveals Beauty in

Creative Pursuits this is fundamentally

true B chulan points to a letter written

by France Kafka in the letter says that

writing was a reward for the fact that

he was quote pinched beaten and ground

nearly to dust by the devil thus for

Kafka to write was Inseparable from his

suffering pain can be the kindling for

our highest creative Pursuits for our

imagination itself creativity may be a

sword we are forced to forge as the

world presents us with pain we see

darkness and we must imagine light we

cannot heal so we must heal ourselves we

must build a World in which we can take

refuge from Pain the anguish is a demon

most certainly but the world we build in

defense against it is more holy and

spectacular than our suffering could

ever

be pain pushes us into the new it

propels us forward it fractures our

attachment to Old ideas and Concepts

without discomfort we would be most

perfectly happy to remain as is forever

disruption tears apart conception and

forces us to build new ones to become

better and more whole is to change and

change only comes when we experience

discomfort it Bears repeating that pain

is not inherently good but it is not

also wholly bad it is neither suffering

just is we cannot remove pain from our

world if we try to do so we only remove

our capacity to deal with pain if we

attempt to free ourselves of pain

entirely or even convince ourselves that

we have done so then we find a dangerous

situation one certainly more dangerous

than accepting pain as a reality of life

this situation is the type that led me

to my Suicide we experienced the

inevitable pain but we have been unable

to equip ourselves in preparation and we

are now unable to transmute the feelings

once they have flooded our soul this is

precisely the point we should not invite

pain or let undue pain run amuk in our

world but we must also not build some

elusory existence where pain is

something we can eliminate we must

prepare for understand and be able to

cope with suffering in its endless

incarnations I once thought of Life as a

mountain to me it was something we must

climb and Summit with some Grand

destination in mind life was one large

obstacle and we were meant to spend our

days conquering that obstacle pain was

the stumble from the the mountain the

misstep that decayed Ascension perhaps

even life itself was a fight in

pain I have since abandoned this idea I

think life is not a mountain but a

valley which we walk through it is

ambivalent in totality functioning as

its own ecosystem but it is incredible

in its many pieces the flying seeds of

dandelion are the stirrings of town and

its residence the grass massages my feet

like my cat's paw PA in my lap on a cold

evening the sun too shines like the

smiles of those I love which fade in

time and are replaced by nights of

Darkness only for the day to inevitably

reemerge bees tend to their flowers and

they may sting me as they do so but this

is owing not to my actions and instead

to minations and psychologies which

always I cannot or need not

understand as I walk through the meadow

I know I will one day and in due time

reach the tree line where this Valley

disappears into the darkness of a

forest I hope that by then I have

appreciated the valley so intensely that

I can only welcome a change of scenery