Last night I thought to myself that it had been a long while since I had cried. Honestly, I couldn't remember when last I did. Tonight I did. As I did, it occurred to me that most often, I cried for suffering that I thought went unnoticed. In my view, we all suffer to some extent. Obviously, some more so than others. Howevrer, suffering is one of the (many) integral parts of the existence of human beings. To suffer is to be human. But for some, and almost the entirety of the people I will meet more than once, it is a part of their lives that is bearable.
What makes suffering bearable is knowing that others understand it, or will look on it with favor. Knowledge of outside knowledge ennobles suffering, in other words. Unsung heroes are sad because a hero, one who suffers (and all of us do), should have the story of that suffering told. Suffering without any trace is not remembered. Aristotle missed the mark on catharsis. We don't care about the suffering of tragic protagonists because we get some kind of emotional release from seeing them suffer per se. We feel better because their IMAGINED suffering is remembered. Even false suffering is immortalized. How much more so would our own be, should a great playwright know of it and tell all of our life? Is it not greater than that which never happened? There is your catharsis. Knowing that your own story, told well, would touch the sympathies of those hearing it. All of us could ask for nothing more than to have our story told to others that they might know of our desires to be great and the forces whic prevented that greatness.
Tonight I cried. I cried, but only after I had exhausted the avenues of explanation that I felt were open to me. I called the ears that I trusted, but they were not able to answer me. I thought then of my own petty obstacles, and how so many others had suffered worse but did not have the luxury of that which I write now. They left their stories untold, or unregarded. We owe an ear to every person that has ever been, if we think our own story is worth hearing. I cried then, knowing that I would not be able to explain myself. Why I felt how I felt and what I had chosen that led to where I was would be lost, even to me. Similarly are lost those of every person.
It has been noted that "all [humans] lead lives of quiet desperation" and that "either all of us are heroes or none of us are." These basic concepts fuel my founding principles. At bottom, none of us are so different from each other that we cannot see the basic human similarities between all of us. To do otherwise is to be vain, ignorant, selfish, and completely trapped in a sociopathic worldview regarding fellow prisoners as tormentors, when only the recognition and fellow feeling of those same beings has any possibility of making our existence worthwhile.
In other words, the cure to your sorrow lies NOT in yourself, but in others. The lazy answer is that of the stoics. "Cease to care of these things, and they will not be a bother any longer." It is easier to stop breathing. Once you divorce yourself from the social fabric, YOU ARE DEAD. If nothing perturbs you at all, you have more in common with stones. Embrace your humanity! You are a social being. Born to need, and living in need, you cease to be a human when no one matters to you anymore. Self-sufficiency is for the weak! Need will make you free!
