A gritty reality

Dear Friend,

I continue to hear you advocate for suffering. I love you, but sometimes, I want to flip you upside down. I'm afraid you're speaking out the wrong orifice. I know your thought is a common one. In fact, one writer in the same school of thought, takes your journey to it's natural conclusion

Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit…. I doubt that such pain makes us ‘better’; but I know that it makes us more profound.

I guess we could have some idea of life based in suffering like the plan was to be dropped naked and alone in a sandstorm. But skin peels and sunburn do what, really? Besides hurt like hell. And I'm not sure that Friedrich Nietzsche is aligned with you heart and soul, at the end of the day. Nor does the destination of destruction shared by thinkers in that stream of thought.

That's the problem, isn't it? Once you lose the meaning for suffering per se, you may very well lose the meaning for your suffering. Then you are completely untethered. Is that why you tell yourself that God has sent you the sandstorm? So you feel like your suffering is somehow holier and more true? Either way, I feel your pain. Not that I can begin to feel it. Maybe I can just begin to imagine it. And it makes that sandstorm feel light and momentary,indeed, but not in a good way, at least from where I'm standing.

From where where I'm standing, it looks as if-- even feels like you're bearing the weight of the world upon you. And I think-- I may be wrong-- but we've read the same Book, so catch me up-- someone has done that for us already-- precisely so that we need not.

But even though sunburns are out, skin peels are still trendy. So maybe the sandstorm is just where you want to be. Recognize, at least, to stand or shelter in the face of it is at least your choice.

thus spake,

me.