(no subject)

[daphnep]

You move on.

Or rather, the world moves on, and you find yourself carried along with it. Time is a tide impossible to resist. Swimming against it is pointless flailing limbs.

The other day I was walking down the street, and a car pulled out of a driveway just ahead of me. The window was down and I had a straight view of the driver. She was a young woman with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was beautiful, and she was crying. Her face was pale and blotchy, her eyes were puffy, and her nose was red the way noses get when a person's been crying a long time.

I watched her crying and driving and I wondered what she'd lost.

I wanted to ask her: "What did you lose?"


I've been reading lj rather attentively. It helps a lot, for some reason. Livejournal is like so many rolled-down car windows, I peer inside and see all of you, crying as you drive. I look at you all and remember the things you've lost.

I wish I could fix it all. I want to give it all back. I want to bring your father back, and you, your beautiful girlfriend. I want to bring back the baby you lost. I want to make your cat better, and bring your dog back, and make your father better, make your little girl all better, and bring your own healthy body back. I want to give you a new kidney, you a new knee, and you a whole brand new start. I want Simon back.

But I can't do anything.
The condition of life is suffering, says buddha. So we keep driving, because we have no other choice.

Comments

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

We don't have a choice. Oddly, I think that "getting up" part is actually easier to do now that I no longer believe in God.

It's loss.

Losing hurts, but it's nothing personal. I don't have to look to a so-called "personal, loving God" and wonder why he singled me out specially for this particular punishment, or what lesson he's trying to teach me. Loss happens to everyone alike, and there is no reason, no escaping it, and no, I don't deserve it, but neither do any of the rest of all these good people. I can stop shaking my fist at empty sky, and start peering in car windows instead.

That's a comfort, in its own weird way.

[m-fallenangel.livejournal.com]

It's indeed a comfort. I've known lots of religious people who are terrified of an empty, unfeeling universe. I take comfort in it.

The events of our lives are determined by unfeeling (and therefore unvengeful) random chance and by our own actions. That's empowering and comforting. I don't have to hope that some deity somewhere will be pleased enough with me to give me what I want. I can work for it, myself, and whether I achieve it or not, I learn many things along the way.

When I suffer loss, I accept it and its attached pain as the cost to balance out all the great joys I've had. I don't fear tears any more than I fear laughter, and I try not to hold onto the sad moments any more than the joyous ones, because holding onto either prevents me from experiencing the moment I'm currently living.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

Yup. Precisely.

I sat in the garden for lunch just now. It started raining and I watched the way the surface of the fishpond changed in the raindrops. The world is pretty fucking amazing, really. When we're paying attention.

[m-fallenangel.livejournal.com]

And paying attention every moment is, for me, the key to happiness and the dilution of suffering.

[m-fallenangel.livejournal.com]

Not that I quite have that perfectly down yet, or anything, but it's the thing I work on most, um, attentively.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

*laugh*

But that's all we can do. And it really is the key to happiness.