Do you believe there is a correlation between suffering and blessing? Do you believe that the more you suffer, the more you are blessed? If so, that means the more you are blessed, the more you will suffer? Doesn't this feel like a transaction? Do we use suffering as coupons to redeem blessing? Would you ever use your blessing as coupons to redeem suffering? Nonsense, nobody would ever want to redeem suffering. That is a stupid idea. But we are so ready to accept blessing, and never in our life would we ever entertain the thought of willingly accepting suffering. But if life is made up of both, doesn't that mean that we want life, but only a part of it? And if so, can we really call this a life? Can we really say that we are living? What is life without suffering.
I do not believe in the common phrase
if you never feel sadness, you would never know what happiness feels like
To me, this phrase is idiotic. It is a cliche. It is overused. And it is used to trivialise sadness. Sadness can be overwhelming. It can suffocate you with a heavy blanket. But it can also embrace you. Sadness can embrace you and you can get so comfortable and used to it that you wouldn't want anything else, because you have never known what anything else was. What is this life that everyone is raving about?
Love.
Let's leave out what love is supposed to be. Because nobody exercises its true worth. Love is supposed to be unconditional. It is supposed to be who you are, expressed in what you do, not dependent on the receiving end. It is supposed to be sacred, and not treated as a transaction, I give you this for something in return. So let's forget that, because we never ever exercise it in this way. We are selfish human beings, we are lonely human beings, we are stupid human beings.
I am used to not getting what I want. But I am also used to fighting for what I want, even if it ends badly. Call it a poly mentality. You apply to university with your appeal letter at hand because you know that JC kids who score below average would get a spot before you, even if you've got a decent or above average GPA. You prepare your speech and emails because the school you enter would not give you your major, solely because you do not fit in their little boxes. Literature was a grey word to me because I could never select it. Geography, History, even Mathematics, they were all black. Bold, black, solid. They were options. But I didn't want them. I wanted lit. The ONLY thing that was grey. It's not because I am drawn to wanting what I can't have, but I knew with the entirety of my being that it was for me. You didn't take pure lit for O's, you didn't take lit in A's. True. But I bloody took bookpub and I got published and I worked as a writer and an editor and a copywriter and I've written poems and prose for years. But you didn't take pure lit for O's. So I appealed. Their first call to action is always to reject. So I appealed more. I crashed lit classes when I was in geog. I suffered in geog because I hated it, not just because I didn't understand it, but because I knew in my heart I was wired for lit and I would be good at it. So I got it in the end. I got into lit. And I'm doing bloody damned well.
The first call to action is to reject. Sometimes you get stuck in a place so miserable, not because you are alone, but because you know that you'd be so good together with this person. You were wired in sync. You saw the world the same way, you saw people in the same light, and things you believed in that made people cringe or laugh were the same things they'd believed in with all their heart. But they would always be grey to you. Not an option. Unable to click. Which is strange because from the moment you met you clicked. But they would still be grey. And no matter how many times you tried to choose them, the universe would not allow it. And how do you appeal? And to whom do you appeal? To God? What letters do you have? What portfolio do you have to show? Do you have your personality and character and beliefs on a report to prove how right you'd be together? I'm sorry. Office hours are from 9 - 5. And from where you are standing, time has been standing still since you met.
It's not the same as falling in and out of love. You are constantly falling in a dark endless pit, and you never stop. You never breathe. You never actually get to reach the same ground as the other. So you keep falling, hoping they'd find you and stop you and help you breathe. But the pit is dark and lonely and you know it would only come to an end if you will it. With your whole being, you will it to stop. What time is it? Where are you? Are you ever conscious about the state you are in? This life that others talk about outside the pit, what is it?
And if all you've ever known is not getting what you want, you might get used to this feeling. But you are also used to fighting for what you want, even if it ends badly. But it never ends. You keep fighting. Until you are exhausted and beaten and so cynical about everything and everyone.
Perhaps you should fight different. Fight for gravity to pull your feet down to the ground. Fight for space in your head and your heart, that you can fill it with anything else. Fight against the universe that tells you you will never get what you want, and get it, by wanting something else. Fight every morning when you feel you cannot get out of bed, when you have no motivation to function in society, when you feel time is going to trap you in the present where you are sad, or in the past where memories pull you back, or the what-ifs of the future. Fight so damned hard to breathe again. To feel the ground again. To be back in this life that everyone raves about.
You have to will it, first.
Is there a correlation between suffering and blessing?
I believe so, in line of eternity.
But this is now.
And now kinda sucks.