452. Past
Principles
Death and dying
Understanding wanting out
It is possible to be around such negative forces one would rather die than live. I’m not saying I condone this, but I understand it. When suffering real crisis, health issues or even a life and death situation, I recall my will to survive was present. It wasn’t time for me to quit. This was clear. I needed a miracle to survive whatever I was going through but I kept on whether I received it or not.
What’s more problematic is when things are stable (no imminent crisis, no loss of job, or bad health, or bad teeth, and no family member in trouble) and yet certain forces are at work that are very upsetting to your equilibrium. This can have a negative impact on your life. You might be ok, and this might have taken a lot of work, but even when you are ok the quality of your life could still be miserable. Imagine if you weren’t ok, what then? Another way of seeing it is that it took everything you had to get to zero, and now once you are even, maybe even a bit more, things still aren’t right. How disappointing. You worked and waited to reach the plus column, and once there, you are let down.
There was this lady friend, Betty, who I thought liked my artwork. She then bought a book about an artist who was a third rate Andrew Wyeth. He copied photos, which Wyeth never did, and did barely acceptable cliché paintings of poor southern rural African Americans. Not to demean him, but Betty was stubborn, and insisted he was great, and he wasn’t and I knew it. This told me that many of our talks were for naught. She hadn’t valued my efforts which I thought she had. Instead of support and cooperation, I received contention.
In the same time period a friend “Peter” somewhat dissed me, at least that’s how I perceived it at the time. Later it was straightened out. When I called him, I wanted to talk about my folks and about some money issues I had with them, but he couldn’t talk. In looking for some warmth, I got coldness. I turned my attention upstairs but even that seemed remote. Things were alright, but I was alone and that was my lot. How long, how long alone I asked? So I could understand at these times when someone, even when feeling well, could want to end it. If life offers nothing when you have tried and have been decent, and even have a little change in your pocket, why continue if it still disappoints?
There’s a joke about people who have money and yet are still unhappy. They’re unhappy because they no longer can blame everything on not having money. Some parallels exist here. Sometimes there is a configuration, even when circumstances are good, where life is devoid of any redemptive qualities and I can understand feeling empty and wanting out.
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