Haine & Pair

When things hurt us most, we often trick ourselves into believing that feeling anything is feeling well. It's almost a survival instinct - we feel that something that provides the sense of being alive, regardless of how it hurts us, is better than anything that doesn't. Because at least that which hurts us has an immediately identifiable corollary of reminding us, through pain, that we don't have to feel that way. I often think that when people wish for pain, they have a silent hope that if they take on as much pain as possible in one sitting, then perhaps they won't have to deal with it anymore. Whether they think that they may create a karmic shift that leaves them spared from any further episodes, or if they will build a tolerance to that level of pain - and subsequently be able to walk through those fires without blinking.

Yet, when we convince ourselves that we have a form of protection from a specific type of pain, we most likely leave ourselves susceptible to a completely different, perhaps more potentially damaging brand of pain.

It's a hard realization, that life's ratio of pain to pleasure is perhaps as wide as 80:20 - but the pride comes in holding onto the right experiences. When we wallow in misery, whether our own accumulated experiences or those impressed on us by someone or something else, we leave our minds on pause - while our bodies continue to age and be battered. So that when we finally return our focus to our present state, we have what seems to be only more damage to sift through.

As silly and cliched as it has become, carpe diem is still a worthy way to conduct one's life. If nothing else it gives us only that day's rises and drops to deal with, and no extraneous stresses - good or bad.

But don't take the statement as it is used in modern terminology, as a rallying cry. No, take it in the terms presented in its birth: Seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit luppiter ultimam quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicbus mare Tyrrhenum: sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi spem longam resces. dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem quam minimum credula postero.

Whether Jupiter has allotted to you many more winters, or this final one which even now wears out the Tyrrhenian sea on the rocks placed opposite - be smart, drink your wine. Scale back your long hopes to a short period. While we speak, envious time will have already fled. Seize the day and place no trust in tomorrow.

And if you really stop to think about it, those who have found themselves victims of real, scarring pain have no reason to trust tomorrow - because as history is always an indicator, there will most likely only be pain. Today is all that matters, steal it - make it yours, and trust nothing that anyone tells you about time or healing.