Memento Mori

You know, it really doesn't pay to trust people who are "up" all the time.  Or who insist on always looking on the bright side of life.  That doesn't ring true to me.  It feels like they're lying.  Or at least that they're hiding their less pretty sides. 

Sometimes I think that people who insist on always looking at the bright side are really in denial and terrified of what they may find if they go scrabbling around in their own closets.  Sometimes people who don't wanna go down are suffering from one of the diseases pertinent to our culture - the sort of excessive hubris that automatically comes after a while when you're up too long.  It starts to feel illegal to go down in a death-denying culture which insists that you must be always up, and that if you go down we'll medicate you.

That's insane.  That's like being a parent and allowing a red lemonade-drinking child to have as much as they want and to stay up for as long as they want.  Who isn't allowed to see dead Uncle Fred in the front parlour because that's too scary for children.  (But then what kid would see dead Uncle Fred anyway these days?  We secrete him away before he can give the game away.  Chances are Uncle Fred will wait out his closed-casket funeral in a funeral home.

It doesn't pay to shield ourselves from the dark, simply because we'll always be afraid of it.

When you are down, there are no end of advisers on hand to recommend how to change your viewpoint,  your habits, your diet, to quite simply harden the fuck up.

But no.  When you fight tooth and nail not to come to the dark place like I consistently do and consistently have, once you are here there is a clear-seeing that strikes you, that is beautiful in its starkness, so that you almost don't want to leave.  There is a space here and a silence that you wish to try to remember to take back with you when you swim back up to the surface.

You want to find a way to bring these anti-hubris eye drops back with you when you go back.  To remind you of that which you keep forgetting, that both sides of the coin belong. 

Darthdowney

And that your sadness is beautiful. Though it not be sociable, or you be palatable when you are in that space.  That's okay.  Let it be.  Despite what anyone else may say, your sadness and your darkness is a holy space.  It is sometimes best to walk the holy and dark space in your own solitude.  It's okay.

I think this is why people have skulls on their desks.  It is a reminder of the darkness, of that which is not able to be seen when you are in the light.  Memento mori - remember that you shall die.  It's not really as morbid as we've been led to believe.