if not NOW,. then when?
when i reach a functional hysteria at our capacity for loss, there is one thought that curbs it. i have a single consolation, one slim exit lane (lit as an airplane isle, with tiny white lights) past the cloverleaf of worry and of grief: a reasonable person cannot loose herself in lamenting human suffering without counting herself as a participant in the objectionable situation. it's like swearing at traffic-you ARE the problem. you do not contribute to it, you do not permit it, you are it, by definition.
to meditate excessively on human sorrow manufactures more of the same. the margins of our happiness are quite slim, we suffer a great deal by virtue of our blueprint--we simply don't have room to allow morbidity, to dwell on the unfortunate aspects of our condition. the dying starts before we're born. the living, unless you force it, may never start at all. a committed existentialist is not sulking at the party, she's grinning at the gallows with a tip for the hangman, one last cigarette, and tight fistful of whatever happiness she has managed to extract from a life in the mine.
so buck up, i say to me. not as a dismissal of the heartache all around you, not as a concession to the mindless council of the optimists, but because if you don't buck up, immediately, you are absolutely full of shit. if you were as angry as you pretend to be about the absurd excesses of human pain, you'd combat them anywhere you found them, even if they lay sleeping in the ringing hollows of your very own bones.
to meditate excessively on human sorrow manufactures more of the same. the margins of our happiness are quite slim, we suffer a great deal by virtue of our blueprint--we simply don't have room to allow morbidity, to dwell on the unfortunate aspects of our condition. the dying starts before we're born. the living, unless you force it, may never start at all. a committed existentialist is not sulking at the party, she's grinning at the gallows with a tip for the hangman, one last cigarette, and tight fistful of whatever happiness she has managed to extract from a life in the mine.
so buck up, i say to me. not as a dismissal of the heartache all around you, not as a concession to the mindless council of the optimists, but because if you don't buck up, immediately, you are absolutely full of shit. if you were as angry as you pretend to be about the absurd excesses of human pain, you'd combat them anywhere you found them, even if they lay sleeping in the ringing hollows of your very own bones.