Hollow 3 |
A couple of years ago, I took a break from Daily Kos from February 16 until September 21 of 2008. Seven months. But I didn't just stop writing.
I spent some time looking at those essays I wrote during that hiatus. Here at the end of 2010, with mortality peeking at me from around the corner (my surgery has been rescheduled for this coming Monday afternoon) I have decided that maybe I should share a few of them.
Resurrected for last night: Where ragged people go
The following piece was published on January 11, 2008. It has become even more apropos since then.
Each day I can watch him trudging home from wherever he has been. Fortunately it is downhill from the bus stop to where he lives. He never smiles, eyes focused on the ground a few feet in front of his pace.
Beaten down.
The world so heavy that he can't even look up.
Shoulders sagging under the weight of the last straw, and the last straw before that... and the one before that. A succession of so many minor beatings to the ego that he flinches reflexively at anything, everything, expecting the worst
Back bent from too many sorrows.
And you want him to rise up?
Why? Is his life going to be better? Tomorrow, when he rolls out of bed, is anything he interacts with going to be better than it was? Is it worth his effort? Does he have any effort to give?
I've been there, a time or two...or ten, when all one worried about was where the next bottle, or toke, or hit was coming from, anything to reach numb. Anything more than numb was a bonus.
Fortunately, I found more. I found a way out. I found people who would sometimes lend a hand. Sometimes it was enough. Mostly it wasn't quite enough, but it kept hope alive that someday, maybe there might be enough. It was a good thing that I am an optimist, by nature, and being beaten down couldn't...or maybe just didn't...totally destroy that. I can do so, if we are not careful.
And I made it through...to a better place...and to a better place, repeated often...and eventually to this place. Life evolves. So does a life. Sometimes. Sometimes it may be so slow that it is agonizing to watch.
I never get to see his eyes...but I feel like I know the pain there. I think I've seen it before...in my own mirror.
And who knows? Maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is a happy space that awaits him. But I know that the world lets loose a sigh as he passes.
So much could have gone wrong. Apparently, for many people it does, because I do not find many of them in places like this, a blog on the web, striving for more. Trying to discover what the world wants to be. If indeed that is why we are here...or some of us are here...or at least a few...
You have to feed a man's stomach and his soul before you can convince him to join in helping others.
Other than that, Doctor Maslow, how was your day?
Life sometimes goes on, at least for some of us. We sometimes need to pick and choose what to invest our outrage in. Because there is so much all around us to be outraged about and our outrage is a limited resource: unleash too much of it and despondency creeps near, ready to pounce.
And the back bends and the shoulders sag further under even more weight. And the legs become leaden and bleeding feet are dragged, one painfully in front of the other until collapse is imminent.
And these are the people that get harangued for not standing up to the oppression of their world. Our world, too, unless we just want to abandon them while we parse what the latest words uttered by some politician in some speech are supposed to mean, a speech that will never be heard because the People of the Numb want the world to shut down and go away, if just for an hour or two, hoping that the dreams that they've had dashed and the pain they experience daily, hourly, and so minutely, death by a thousand cuts, might just drift away for a moment.
It's hard to sell Hope in a world where the internal sky is always gray.
Where the sky is always gray, people don't have the power to rise up. At least they don't recognize the power they may have. They can't locate any spare energy to transfer*, regardless of the time period involved.
buhdy wrote:
The vast majority of humans will only seek to use the power of resistance when they have been made ....uncomfortable.... enough.
The people of the gray skies know nothing but discomfort. They can't distinguish comfortable from uncomfortable. The only different feeling they can discern is numb.
Sky EnsnaredBeaten Down
The world so heavy
he can't look up
shoulders sag
under the weight
of too many last straws
back bent
from too much sorrow
leaden legs drag bloody feet
painfully forward
until collapse is imminent
Rise up? How?
--Robyn Elaine Serven
--July 11, 2008 |
|
*Physics: Power equals energy transferred divided by duration.