Why am I a Pessimist?

“Once more, the apparently contrary emotions of joy and sorrow have been fused, so that the one, far from undoing its opposite, reinforces it, becomes an element in its full expression. Each new joy is the crown of its predecessor, so that emotion itself is related to the inclusive effect of majesty; at the same time , this joy expresses itself in tears, in a sorrow which ‘wept to take leave of them’ in the moment of being replaced by the joy of new discovery.”

-        -  Shakespeare:  The Last Phase by Derek Traversi

Eternal rest as they say when someone dies. Rest is what makes any person happy after toil but that is rest for a moment. Even so, it makes any man who had exerted so much calm and enjoys a good and happy idle moment. When man is always at rest then he is dead. He is dead for he has already ceased to move. Life ends when motion eternally ends. Life is all about struggle to survive and that in itself is motion. When that activity stops, life stops and death comes.

Many men despise and fear death. This is natural as man desires to acquire more and wishes to pass away once he is satiated by his lust. Many want to bask at an end which is not yet The End. However, there are those who are not in the end but are willing to be in the process. They would rather love a good fight and a moment's rest is another preparation for another fight.

Call me as someone who loves to suffer. I mean, I do not just pick a fight just to suffer. But what if there be circumstances I encounter which will bring me to pain, then I will gladly eat what is served. Although instinct sometimes and most of the times go for flight rather than fight, but I always hope and try to keep a clear mind to go for flames. On a good day, a man can just squander his time for happiness and they say that they felt the beauty of life. Actually, they felt what death is and this is being numb to pain. Enjoying a good travel they say? That is what ghosts do as they roam wherever they go. Being on top of a hill? That is where the soul is when it meets its maker. Being with friends? Is it not where our final and eternal communion will be? Then I choose and chose not to die. Not yet.

“Cowards die many times before their death. The valiant never taste of death but once.” Reminds me of Sisyphus and how life is an endless absurdity of the struggle to push the boulder up to see it fall and then pushed again. Samurais at peace prepare for a perfect way to struggle and die in a gruesome war. A soldier dies when he no longer fight.  Yes, “pain demands to be felt”! Pain is at the center of life, to be overcome. In pain and in the labor to thrive with and through it is the struggle that makes the self aware even more. Happiness dulls existence, pain magnifies one’s facticity. It is in pain we see a man at his threshold to become an animal or a noble man. It is in pain that a person can see the beauty of being with someone or being alone. Pain, the great negative, the one who wakes us up. Happiness is bliss, death is bliss. Pain is what makes us sure we are alive. Although they say that happiness is what makes life is, but if one reflects, one enjoys because there is the possibility that this experience will not occur again – pain resides thereafter and the conception of an eventual loss and contingency makes us bask the happy now. One deeply appreciates happiness at the blissful moment because of the fact that we feel alive and after it, pain dawns again.

Life is a constant struggle to reassure that we once were not really us and always find what really is and having realized who we were, then we deserve rest. I am who I am when I am in who I ought to be – that then is the end. But if I yet seek the I I sought, then every moment is an I struggling to become and in the becoming, one is an is to be, a not yet but will be thus we have motion. I am for the I and with that for I am still yet to be, then I change, struggle and in pain for every matter I came into is shedding the marble to become a lifeless sculpture at the end. A magnificent sculpture yet bereft of motion, bereft of life, no pain but stillness. Music is music when it progresses and once it ends, it is silence. Just like one is when one dies. But before the cosmos ends in silence as how it was, there should be the big bang, the noise, the struggle to occupy space. Comforting to know that before I end in the nought, I was in the struggle to be.

Struggle brings pain, but that is what kept the dialectics alive. Pain breeds, happiness is cessation. Happiness is not well received if one was not in pain contrary to that of a mother seeing what she labored for nine months. Pain indeed awakens existence.

I for one am a teacher-as-of-the-moment and forgive me to include something a little bit farfetched from the existential flavor. But, it is hard to see them not in pain in a classroom, it pains me. I am not a glutton for pain nor a sour wuss to let them feel pain. However, I want a death, a rest, an eternal rest after the labor I chose to partake, this profession I love. Pain will make them move, the desire to survive. To talk, to coordinate, to participate, to answer, to move, to study, to ask and if I serve the meal before any actual hunger is felt, then consider the meal unworthy of the palate. Water cannot be deeply appreciated when one does not thirst. Pain makes us ready to feel happiness. Pain leads us to authentic happiness. How we struggle to achieve in the process is our existential dilemma. How we push the boulder matters. If one escapes pain, we escape the path to true joy. Labor first and behold the fruits after. No man can pluck a fruit if he does not farm nor even dare to reach out.

It is only when you have struggled with life then you are deserving of rest. Eternal rest? I need one after a life long labor in pain chiseling the marble figuring out who I ought to be.