People have written about the middle-of-the-night black thoughts—those times when your mind reviews the past but with an emphasis on every embarrassing, or wrong, or morally dubious, or inexcusably naïve thing you ever did. That idea resonates with me because it's exactly what my own mind does. I am grateful that I follow this course only in the middle of the night, those nights when I wake at 2 and never go back to sleep. If I relived those shameful events in daylight hours, I'd go mad.
Like everyone, I am surrounded by people and families in trouble. I carry with me right now four dear friends who are struggling with health. That doesn't include the dozens of additional friends and family who have different sorts of difficulties. And it doesn't include troubled nations.
Why, if I allowed myself to think this way, I might have to conclude that suffering is the human condition. Surely not. Just see us cobble together moments that feel pleasant or that bring us comfort. See us snatch pings of joy from the cacophony of the daily bombardment. See us reach for happiness. We are human. We are wresting a liveable life from often unfriendly, inauspicious raw materials.
We carry on, following the carrot held in front of us even while we are thumped with the stick. So now comes the hard part. The real test is this: when we seize those moments/years of pleasure or comfort, we must be sure that we don't achieve our happiness at the expense of others. If our happiness is gained by grinding others into the dust, then we don't deserve it and it should not last.
I'm reminded here of the recent interest in connecting Jane Austen's fictional families with the slave-based sugar plantations in the West Indies. This revelation has changed everything.
And see how I have swerved dramatically from the personal (the you and I of this story) into the political (the "they", who are, of course, us).
I'm sorry. You are sorry. He, she, or it is sorry. Are THEY sorry? It's safe to say that this essay is unravelling, tugged by the wayward and undisciplined opinions of my id. And when I get into my metaphoric id, you know I'm in trouble. Go back to the concrete.
Concrete? Bad choice. That whole industry is Mafia-run.
Something material. Oh yes. Domestic bliss. That'll be a safe direction. I'm looking at the narrow shelf above the sewing table. On it are two bottles of ink (one of them India ink), a jar of lavender buds should I ever want to make a couple of sachets, and a plastic container of eighteen tubes of glitter to be used in crafts. Do any of these items contribute to domestic bliss? Well, of course they do, or I wouldn't keep them, right?
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