This is a universal truth. You know it, I know it. So let's skip that bit where you act outraged and come up with an argument.
If you're an optimist, someone who believes in the strength and courage of the human race, then let me break your belief into tiny little pieces.
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We crave what hurts us.
All of us. Our entire lives spent crawling on our hands and knees, searching for relief in cruelty and misery.
People are idiots, not because they lack the sense to know they crave for a fire to burn their hands, but because they disguise this need under labels to deceive themselves.
Alcoholism, drug use, smoking. Examples that come readily to mind.
And now in your mind,with each of these images, you associate to a worn-out junkie, shivering in the cold, life broken and wasted.
This is what society has done. In the eyes of the world, addiction is only the domain of the weak, the poor and the powerless. They could never succumb to it. They possess willpower, they have ideals they stand by.
You're all bloody wrong.
What of love then?
People's lives are spent wandering in between achievements and failures, looking for love.
The world lauds the concept of love. It commercializes on it. Profits are made from the rush of estrogen to our brains. A whole industry revolving around a single gland.
But what does love ever get you?
But what does love ever get you?
For a few months there is the feeling of bliss. That rush of "love" returning whenever you see your partner.
And then it fades. Some trace of it will remain, if you're lucky. But eventually, implacably, as sure and definite as the death of a star.
It will disappear.
To be replaced by a sense of obligation. Where there was once devotion to your relationship, there is now duty to maintain what you spent so long a time forging. You are no longer a lover in love, you are a janitor sweeping and dusting the walls. A captain trying to keep his ship afloat, not knowing he's headed for an inevitable glacier.
Regardless, it is not the failing of love that I use to illustrate my point, but the result of it's failure.
Shock, Denial, Anger, Sorrow, Acceptance. The cycle of reactions after the bridge is burnt.
Shock, Denial, Anger, Sorrow, Acceptance. The cycle of reactions after the bridge is burnt.
Reactions from this point on differ. Some, in fear of ever falling prey to the soul-wrenching agony they had to suffer, vow off love. To them, it is nothing more than the wheel to the mouse. A pointless exercise to keep them occupied, while they go about the business of living. A lie they perpetuate to themselves. For with being human comes the need to find love. It would be easier to live without a heart than to tear love from your being.
Some march forth with renewed vigor. Determined to find their soulmates, they dive once again into the murky waters, hoping to find gold at the bottom. Only to drown before they can emerge to the surface.
What every hapless Knight in search of his damsel-in-distress or Princess in search of her Prince Charming fails to realize is, that no matter how many times the love is thwarted by the Evil Dragon, they will eventually continue upon their quest. Only to have pain inflicted upon them once again.
I pose to you a question now.
Why is this?
Human instinct is to learn. To understand. To Grow. If we could learn that fire burns. why can we not abstain from love?
Do not sing me songs of love great and fair. Recite not to me ballads of kings and queens. I know the answer to this question. It is time for you to know it as well.
We crave love not for pleasure of love, but for the pleasure of misery.
It is in misery that we revel. In cruelty and times of despair that the human spirit breaks through. Only through the gray light of sorrow can the sun be seen to have any relevance at all.
You may be skeptical, you may choose to not believe. It is your choice. Remain unknowing, unwilling to admit the truth to yourself.
It is human nature to seek out pain.
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That is the way of this life. Short as it is.
We crave it. Just as much as every heroin addict craves his next hit, shivering in the cold, tossing back and forth, weeping and sniffling.
We are addicted.
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Well written, and although you have addressed a valid point, i still think that this search for misery is only a small part of human nature. I mean its way too deep and inconspicuous to use it to define what drives us. In fact happiness still is what we mainly strive for. Its just that the possibility of happiness only arises when we enter the murky waters so we take the chances. And when we finally end up in misery, there is some weird twisted part of us that revels in it and provides the competing commitment of getting out of it. But its definitely not what defines us.
ReplyDeleteit doesn't always end in pain.
ReplyDeletesome stories do have happy endings.
and it is in that hope that people keep looking for their love.
like aragorn said, "there is always hope."
Estel being his name for his entire childhood, he would, wouldn't he?
ReplyDeleteI am so into your LOTR references. I need to do that shit more often.