Pain & Misery

I still love the man I married once upon a time, when I was only nineteen and running away from all the bad stuff that my short life had thrown at me. Of course I still love him, although I do not like some of the things that happened, yet love is not something you just turn off and on...well perhaps something is wrong with me ‘cause I’ve just never figured out how to stop those feelings.

Why would I still care about him? Because I always will and now his life, you see, has taken many strange and painful turns. He’s faced more pain than I could ever imagine with serious health challenges and he remains my friend. Recently, he and I were talking about a mutual friend who had lost their brother and he said a most profound thing,

“Pain is inevitable; misery’s a choice.”

So pure. He hung up the phone. I hung up the phone. Yet somehow my hand stayed on the receiver as I was gripped with the pure simplicity of these six words! Of course we ALL know this. We are not foolish, yet how easy it is to forget this simple, simple statement.

I keep a yellowing index card right here, taped to the books that are holding up my laptop. I keep it there so I can see it every moment I am sitting here “living” my other life. It says, “It’s YOUR choice!” And no matter how often I read that card, many times I slip into a helpless misery or surrender to circumstances.

The virtual world I inhabit at first seemed simple and pretty and fun and crowded with music and beauty. Yet, as in all life, there are dark things that look like they are safe and places that are beautiful, like a Pandoraian paradise, filled with the most vicious of creatures.

Then there are the politically astute and those who are pretenders who do so much damage with words, whispers and doctored “quiet messages” no one hears but those favoured ones read. This world of many layers is a world where damage can begin and never be controllable because of the wildfire nature of unchecked suspicion and the candy like addiction to casual rumour.

How tragic a virtual life can be when hearts behind the screen are disregarded in an all out determination to simply win at all costs.

• Friendship
• Sincerity
• Communication
• Integrity
• Humility
• Compassion
• Grace
• and Love.

When these are forgotten, joy turns to chaos; fun to work; love to suspicion and pain to misery.

How to guard against it? Thankfully, in the virtual world, you can truly rise above it and fly away; on the worst of days you can log off and step away from this machine that now links us together with others and take time to stop multi-tasking long enough to think things back into reasonable perspective.

In the real world it takes a different, but similar, strategy. Nevertheless, sometimes in the virtual world the pain is so real it is a struggle to guard against a nagging misery. That’s where friends come in.

Until you meet real friends
True friends,
Friends who appear before you to embrace you
As warmly as in that other world.
Friends who stay with you through
The Dickensonian “best of times and worst of times”.
Friends, just like those gold ones your Mom/Mum told you were out there.
Friends who accept you with sympathy, empathy and grace.
Even special friends who hold you
Through the pain to keep the misery far from you.

No matter what world you inhabit, one thing is certain – you can’t do it alone. Whoever wrote, “No man is an island”, was right!