ENJOYING MISERY

May 12th, 2021

There are endless dimensions to the human experience, and each comes with it’s own set of conscious variables: how we perceive, appreciate, resist or welcome what is happening.  It’s easy to appreciate a beautiful sunny day when well rested  and with little stress plaguing the mind.  But what about the miserable day, is it impossible to appreciate by definition, or is there a pocket of perspective we can sneak into that can grant a grateful smile upon even our own misery?

A completely happy go-lucky life would be no life at all.  Some common sense logic might parrot the axiom that the sweet is never as sweet without the bitter, but what about appreciating the bitter for what it is, independent of what sweet might have been or might still be?

The darker depths of life are still an experience, one that when placed next to the possibility of having no experience at all may be infinitely sweet.  There are of course miseries that make no experience sound like a reprieve to be dangerously lusted after.  Such desires forsake all possibility of a different and better future, one that might reframe and recast the light on such experiences within memory and find immense gratitude for such dark experiences.

True heartbreak, whether it be over a lover gone or a family member lost is simply proof that the love was a real and genuine experience - it can be an debilitating proof of past authenticity.

It’s a strange hypocrisy that we can enjoy an intense and sad drama at the movies, but fail to translate that same kind of appreciation to the dark vagaries of our own life.

With absolutely all experience, the key is whether or not we embrace it or not.  Absolutely everything, be it happiness, or exquisite physical pain is brought into perspective with an ability to embrace what is happening.  Once that commitment occurs, there’s a certain facility that becomes available regarding how we can hold that experience in our sphere of consciousness.  An embrace enables an ability to hold, and by embracing experience we can learn to hold any experience at just the right angle so that no matter how dark it gets, we can still get it to gleam.