The divinity of a common stone. The pairing of summer and winter, day and night, pleasure and pain. The constant coupling of opposites in our human existence.
I was just reading an article about Kennedy. JFK, it turns out, was in almost constant pain every day of his presidency. Here was a man basking in the world's admiration, yet, as his wife witnessed, sometimes screaming in pain in the privacy of his bedroom.
Kennedy had Addison's disease, for which he took steroids and testosterone. These in turn caused the bones in his back to degenerate; he had three splintered vertebra in his back. During the Cuban missile crisis, and at other times, he took anti-anxiety medicines. He would be given 7 to 8 injections of Demerol in his back before going out to news conferences.
What strikes me is the remarkable courage of this man. Though some may deplore his character because of the drugs he took, I see it rather as a remarkable example of courage in the face of adversity.
I do believe that Kennedy did his best to improve the condition of this world; he was a great inspiration to many, including me. That I find out now that he did this while in great pain only adds to his lustre in my eyes. His accomplishment was as a great uplifter to his nation, and indeed, to the world.
And Kennedy, the admired, accomplished man in great pain, is a perfect example of how the pleasure and pain of human existence seem to be always married together.
What about somebody locked in solitary confinement, sitting in a prison under brutal conditions, isolated, alone, forsaken? Not much pleasure there, hmm? Yet many are the accounts of people finding extraordinary spiritual doorways under such conditions, breaking through to breathtaking realms of spiritual serenity.
What about Hitler, a man enjoying the pinnacle of power atop the Third Reich? Many are the accounts now of his increasing desperation and physical debilitation as the end approached in the last few years. He walked with a stoop, had nervous ticks, would stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning trying to find an elusive sleep.
The pleasure of savoring his immense power, in other words, was exactly balanced by his mental and physical horror as the destruction of his empire, which he clearly saw, approached nearer and nearer.
Look at your own life. If you look closely, you'll see how it all exquisitely balances. Pleasure, pain, pleasure, pain, wise acts, thoughtless acts, victory, defeat...the whole thing. As far as I can tell, it has to be that way.
In the end, perhaps it all balances. We'll all experience pleasure and pain no matter what we do, no matter which course our life takes. Those of us who live "ordinary" lives, nothing special, no particular fame or glory or power or wealth, are compensated by the simple pleasures of living an ordinary, everyday life.
As far as pleasure and pain are concerned, it seems that we'll alway encounter our measure of both, no matter what. We might as well let everything come out as it will—which of course it's going to do anyway!
Sometimes I feel like someone groping to find the answer to Groucho's famous question on TV: Who's buried in Grant's tomb? he would say.
Groucho had a quiz show where people would answer questions and win money. But once in a while someone just couldn't get any of the answers. Then Groucho would look at them and say, Who's buried in Grant's tomb? The contestant would sometimes look puzzled—a trick question?—and then hesitantly say: "Well, Grant?"
"Yes!" Groucho would say triumphantly. And the little birdy would come down and the contestant would get some money.
Well, I must be that contestant. Sometimes it seems like all my groping through the mystery is like someone trying to answer the question, Who's buried in Grant's tomb? "Grant?" "Yes!" comes Groucho's booming voice. Hmm.
Perhaps life will always be a balance somehow no matter which direction it goes.
If this is so, does it mean that we just lay back on the couch and do nothing in life? Not really. The funniest thing, the paradox, is that we keep right on doing whatever it is we're doing; nothing changes. Whether we're working on saving the forests or feeding the homeless or ferrying people around in a taxi or making the steel that supports the economy, we'll probably keep on doing it.
Yet there is a certain deep let-go in seeing that all things are in divine harmony, so exquisitely balanced that every being experiences compensations for their pain and vice versa. Perhaps it's all equal. Perhaps there's no need to ever envy anyone else's life, because, unlikely as it might seem, perhaps that person experiences the same overall balance of pleasure/pain as you do.
The balance of pleasure and pain mirrors the extraordinary duality that exists everywhere else in existence—light and dark, right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, youth and age, summer and winter, on and on.
Perhaps this all-pervasive duality is the cost of existence existing. We could say it's the cost of doing business. To eliminate the "down" side of life, then, even supposing that such a fantasy could be accomplished, would be to eliminate existence itself. To use a metaphor, how extraordinary that existence exists at all, knowing as it does that it will always contain both joy and suffering, pleasure and pain, life and death.
In the end there is nothing left to do but to celebrate life, just as it is, in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, in whatever it is we're happen to be doing. Let us celebrate the majesty and humility of existence, its radiance shining from an ordinary stone, its divine grace dancing from within both light and shadow.
—jim sloman, 11/17/02 for 12/22/02
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