Life is Cruel, and Life is Beautiful.
A late-night scribble about Life. Wonderful. I'm glad to be alive.
EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s been a long time since I last posted here. Too long, really. This piece is from my new weekly email newsletter, ‘Thinking Hard’, which covers the thoughts and things that gripped my mind throughout a given week. Many following pieces will be in the same format, since the newsletter is really just a regularly-updated version of the blog, with some stylistic differences resulting from medium and personality changes over time. If nothing in my writing style has changed or improved, I have fundamentally failed. I don’t believe that has happened. Enjoy the piece. Do some Thinking.
Recently, I’ve done a lot of Thinking about Life. And, holy shit - I’m glad to be alive. Here, now, as myself, in this place in this world.
I’ll keep it short today. I should be doing other urgent work, but instead I spent an entire hour reading about World War II.
I just sat there, flipping through the chilling chapters of a large-print photo-history book. Black-and-white scenes of violence and generosity, love and hate, bravery and cowardice filled the pages. My mind isn’t used to seeing these paradoxical concepts in such close succession - sometimes even in glorious and horrifying unison.
I write this with a heavy heart and conflicted thoughts. I also write this from deep, true gratitude. I’ve never felt so lucky to be alive right now.
The thought of gratitude hit me especially hard tonight. I’ve been doing lots of reading and writing about life, mortality, beauty, and violence. The conclusion that I got to (so far) isn’t new by any means, but it sure seems accurate: Life is Fucked, and Life is Beautiful.
Those two statements, though seemingly contradictory, are somehow not mutually exclusive. They can be, they are, both true at once. If you don’t believe me, you’re wrong. If you already knew this to be true, then I urge you to Think about it some more. Not just on the ‘beautiful’ part, nor only on the ‘fucked’ part. Think about both - in parallel, in endless cycles of attraction and repulsion, in fascinating and inseparable fusion.
Each one lets the other exist. Each one can fill your mind while the other surrounds your world.
It’s fucked, yet it’s beautiful. How crazy is that?
I need to get back to work.
Hope you have a tough week. You're stronger than you think.
JG.
