Never Walked In High Heels

This summer I spent time with a man who seemed to hold anger and pessimism in his heart above all things. The irony of it was, he was a really lovely young man to be around, good looking, worked hard, and full of new ideas. It was just when you were around him in the quiet times that you found his darkness. One evening he told me how he lived to see revenge thrown upon a man who severely hurt his family in the past and if he let that  desire go, he would doubtless loose all of his drive. To him, no marriage was worth celebrating, women lost their ambitions for babies, and faith outside of oneself is setting yourself up for disappointment.

In short, many of the things which could expand life were to be shunned.

And in a lot of ways, I can’t blame him. My friend had it rough all while he was growing up and beyond. Life is hard and we live in a world that teaches to shun vulnerability, not embrace it. If there is pain and heartache present, it should be avoided  at all possible costs, and few good things can come out of suffering. And if you talk to famine victims or people who have had to suffer their entire lives for the bare necessities it would be hard to speak about maturity through suffering. This is why I could never  subscribe to the stoic philosophy of whatever will be will be. How do you say that to the Holocaust victim without justifying oppression?

What’s strange to me is, I’ve spoken to oppressed and exhausted people from all over the world. Some of them have been tormented  beyond  anything I can imagine, and  yet these men and women are not bitter. I cannot  even call them ‘victims’ in good conscience because they don’t see themselves as such. My friend says there is no mercy for those who have hurt him, and by building such boundaries around himself, he narrows his own life.  These others seek to expand theirs through any combination of love and opportunity possible.

Nobody wants to suffer. But I’m starting to think there is a huge difference between the man who doesn’t want to suffer and the one who thinks he’s entitled never to suffer. The ‘entitled’ man actually shortens his own joys by claiming over and over that x never should have happened to him. And thus my friend holds himself captive by bars that he himself put up, saying all the while that he should never be in prison. He is the willing victim, and he will no longer risk what it takes to find life in existence. Living will hurt more. Death is the only way to exist without pain.

I would watch this man smile or laugh from across the room and often wonder if this expression was forced as much as his cynicism. The latter he would drag up and place around his neck whenever another friend became engaged or was starting their home. With so much resentment towards life’s milestones, what is there left to celebrate? Foolish and painful things occur in all corners of life, but avoiding heartache means avoiding love, shunning tears is denying yourself the ability to weep with joy, and with the refusal for forgiveness comes the inability to allow yourself any room for error. The world is never how it ought to be. By expecting it to be otherwise you focus on what should be, not the beauty that is.  And people who want an alternate reality, I can’t help but wonder if they are holding on so much to their fantasy that no splendor of this world will end their self imposed misery.