Cologne, 2004-06-20 (initial)

I, and I assume everyone can relate to this, went through a period of strong emotional and personal distress - strong by my standards, at least. These have not been easy times at all, and I have been very close to snapping more than once. I have now gone long past the climax of this one chapter and wish to share some of my thoughts.

This short essay is not about the why of this period, though - that I might eventually, but this is not the place nor audience; but about my experience with the suffering and how others reacted to it.

During these times, and also when discussing them in retrospect, I was often ``comforted'' with how it would all turn out for the best, how it was not so bad at all, and how sad it was that, poor me, I had to suffer, jolly good I'd be over it in no time and it would all be forgotten, I should look at it from a different angle and see how it was all for the best in the end; and other comments along these lines.

It took me a while to figure out what bothered me about these supposedly ``comforting words''. At first I thought this was a reaction to the lack of rational substance, which did not help me solve my problems at all, but then realized this was not it; there was substance to them on an emotional level, and that they were trying to help me as best as they could, and for this I'm grateful and in their debt, for having stood by me at my worst.

No, it was something else; nothing for which to blame any one of the wonderful people who supported me and still do. I was reacting to a different aspect: The assumption that pain, suffering and grief are ``bad'', and that they should pass away as quickly as possible and be forgotten. More than that, that they were only an illusion, and that one only needed to change one's point of view to feel ``good'' once more.

This all felt belittling to the very real suffering and pain I was experiencing. It was not a pain to be discussed away, and not an illusion. I had failed at a task terribly important to me, and lost a very precious treasure, and struggled hard with accepting this loss, and with trying to make sense of how such a terrifying failure could happen despite all my energy working to change it. How could someone suggest that this would simply pass away, or ever be forgotten?

I had been wounded, and deeply so. (A remark, if I may, to those who read this and understand: the clouds had been growing thicker for a long time before already; this last drop just broke the dam for good and made it impossible to push off any longer.) Yes, I was in pain, and yes, I was suffering. But that's what I needed to go through; no shortcuts, no forgetting, no positivism. I had to work at it, pull the knife out from the wound, pour hydrogen peroxide on it, sew it together again, wipe of the blood and let it rest and heal for a while. And even then, it would leave a scar, or a mark if you will, and not ever heal and leave a baby's skin again, but always be part of me and my history.

The pain provided the focus to me to make sure I found the time to take care of myself immediately. And I found ample work, no kidding, and this has changed me far and deep - and I like to tell myself for the better. And forgetting it - how could that be enough respect to something which had almost killed me and at least torn down my house of cards to the ground? Would that not even force me to repeat the ``learning experience'' until I finally got the point?

When I tried to explain this to them - that I needed to go through this, and that it was valuable to me, in the end just as valuable as the jewel I lost -, people were mostly split into two groups: One of them calling me depressed or at least a drama queen (some of them suggesting getting professional treatment, which might not have been the worst advice), the other one apparently plain out scared. I found that there was no space in their lifes for grief or for ``ashes's work''; and when they themselves could not avoid it, they denied themselves the validity of it, and it collided with the expectation that a ``good'' life was always positive. I even met the idea that everything in life should be love, that anger, fear and pain were just misguided and in the end, just due to a wrong point of view.

I disagree, which may not come as a surprise to you if you read so far.

This did or does not make my outlook on life apocalyptical, or means I am losing my self-confidence. I find it makes it richer and more complex.

Certainly happiness and love are more enjoyable than pain and suffering; but that does not at all imply that pain and suffering have no value or are worthless, and not that they should have no place in our lifes.

I maintain that these ``negative'' feelings are needed; I will not claim that they should balance - that we should spent as much time suffering as we are happy, or however such a balance might be defined - but that they bring a value to our life which cannot be substituted with absolute positivism.

Straining for harmony seems worthwhile to me; however it is often placing the emphasis too far on the perceived ``positive'' side of life, and denies the validity of the rest. I feel this constricts life to an incomplete subset.

Certainly there is also ``meaningless'' pain which one should not pay much attention to, and indeed, a changed point of view may make it disappear entirely. But this is not true every time, and those times are important, and do not deserve to be belittled.

I have made the conscious choice to not ignore them or pretend they do not exist; I try to make space in my life for them when they come, and learn what they have to teach. Not blindly accepting it either, and sometimes fighting back hard, but not denying there is something important there either, and thus allowing time in the fire and the ashes. I have the hope that this allows me to gently guide them.

I maintain that a pure positivism attitude towards life is harmfully limitting and sets wrong expectations. Of course, you are free to disagree, and indeed I agree that it is entirely your own choice how you interpret the world, so if you decide to try and make it all fit into the corset of positivism, do so - alas, please consider for a moment that maybe a more complex model may fit better.

As a closing remark, it seems that in history or even in other cultures, this need was and is understood a lot better, likely a lot better than I could reproduce it here. I have also picked an extreme position of positivism to contrast my (also slightly exaggerated) position against; I trust that this will be understood.