Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

Times have been trying… Illnesses, deaths in the family, dead friends; life’s hardware and software, failing one after another. Strangely at times like these writing is not really a valid resort for me. On the contrary, it feels as if the whole carpet is pulled from under my feet and though it may sound depressing, it as at times like these that I become painfully –and exhilaratingly- aware of the tragedy we are all burrowed in. However, this realization also brings a clear sense of being alive; perhaps that’s why I do not resort to writing, which to me is so linked to the past, so linked to death. The task is not to imagine or re-create this death; it is to live it to the fullest.


I do not know if misfortunes are brought on by one’s own conceptions, there are some who say they are, as if we are in the center of the universe; summon or be summoned. I really have doubts about all these laws of attraction and such. True, subjects do conceive of things that might turn into self-fulfilling prophecies, but I find it extremely unfair to blame a person’s temporary inability to cope with what life brings simply on cognitive negativity. Life and the universe are far too complicated to boil down to a person’s wishes and aspirations. We may be extremely strong creatures, but we are also painstakingly weak and insignificant. I take comfort in this thought.


When disaster strikes me, it usually does so in a flurry of events that unfold one after the other in quick succession. I have had many friends who have remarked I must’ve been a horrible person in my past lives. I refer them to the Book of Job to re-think their convictions. It seems to me that tragic trials are a gift, even though they may be painful while experienced. Happiness is just a sordid trope that we invent to sustain ourselves, though this is not to devalue it. No one likes to wake from a pleasant dream, but we all eventually do. Just like trying desperately to scream while dreaming, we smile in waking life knowing it is a fleeting cover of what lurks beneath. But we smile, we always do, we always will. As Beckett so wonderfully put it, I can’t go on, I will go on…