[Moved from Dec 17]
That fundamental inconsistency, contradiction, no, disharmony. We fear and fight and grieve death, but it must come. The Stoics thought this was the very meaning of life -- preparation for a good death. Christians have it the worst, believe they're going to a better place, yet, generally, fighting so very hard against departing, and grieving so bitterly.
The other day I killed a rat. It was caught in a trap but not dead. Suffering, body smashed, paralyzed. I didn't even know it had been caught, but I heard this strange wheezing. What to do what to do. Hard to think. I don't like killing. I got a bucket of water and dropped the rat in, head first, trap and all. Should be quick. But it wasn't paralyzed after all, and thrashed and twisted out of the trap and out of the bucket and lay on the ground, wheezing and dying. Oh god. And while I watched, it crawled, slowly, under a big pile of call it wood, inaccessible. I got a flashlight and looked as best I could, but not good enough. But it's dead by now. This isn't the rat I killed.
It happened again. I guess I bought a defective trap.
This time I knew that I had to somehow hold it under the water. It struggled, but I pressed the trap against the rat and the bucket, sort of pinning it. Oh god oh god oh god. I'm sure I put way too much strength into it. It can have taken only a relatively few seconds. But I'm not setting any more rat traps.
I thought a lot about that. It's about iron in the soul. What has to be done has to be done. You can't maim and just allow the suffering. Life matters -- a rat fights valiantly, fiercely, futilely, ultimately, crawling away, dying of thirst or of its injury, minutes, hours, days later, hidden and then dead. It didn't have a choice. It chose suffering, because it had to choose life.
That second time, I didn't have a choice. You can't, cannot tolerate vermin -- human history proves this cyclically.
Life matters, suffering matters. Iron in the soul. Stoics, Christians. If not a meaningful, then at least a painless death.
Someone I've known since she was a teenager and have very benevolent feelings for is getting married today. ...
[Restored edit:]
... I am deeply troubled. Again, something about suffering, in this case, inevitable in the middle-distant future. I tell myself, and others, and they tell me, that there's nothing to be done about it. There's suffering you can't do anything about. It's like she doesn't have a choice.
I had always supposed she had more common sense. But I never actually had a meaningful conversation with her.
J
2 comments:
In a rare exercise of second guessing myself, I took out those last few sentences, maybe a week later. My comment:
"This of course is exactly the sort of thing that caused so much trouble 15 years ago. I wrote true things that certainly could hurt feelings, and therefore cause negative reactions. The fact that these pages are effectively if not actually anonymous is irrelevant.
"One more meltdown, well, I don't know what to say. It's the last straw. Or it's just more crap that has to be endured."
A few days ago I eliminated a major components of any blowback, so the edit is restored. If the young woman should see this, it will be hurtful. Not everything needs to be said, but, as it were, tough love, or whatever, has its obligations.
J
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