Unreliable Flowers

“’Without pain how could we know joy?’ This is an old argument in the field of Thinking About Suffering, and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries, but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not in any way affect the taste of chocolate.”

In a way, I agree and disagree.

I think of it in the aspect of this:

I think of a boy. This boy was raised in a unbelievably huge mansion, filled with every luxurious thing you can think of. In this mansion, there are others like him - children his age. They stay there in this mansion, they never leave, never go outside. Doors and windows do not exist, as far as this boy is concerned. Inside is everything this boy needs - adults to take care of him, and children to play with - everything he could ever want. This boy would explicitly know joy. Maybe every week he discovered a new luxury in this world he lived, or a new way to play with his friends... But, I suspect, as this boy grew up this way, as things changed - - maybe one of his playmates became his girlfriend, and maybe he discovered a talent in himself that he loved more than anything else he could do - - he would realize something was missing. He would, somewhere inside him, even if there was no hint of the outside world, and he never considered even the idea there could be, know that there was more, and want for something he never knew.

In that want grows the increase of ideas.

In those ideas, an increase of belief.

In that belief, frustration.

In that frustration, anger and sadness...

In that anger and sadness, pain.

The thing with the humanity is that we're never satisfied. We could be given everything, and still feel like we need something else.

In that - I simply state that man is incapable of not feeling either. We just do. Pain and joy are made of us. It's not a "without one, there can not be the other" theory. People simply are made of it. You take away one aspect, and the vessel we are conversing about is no longer human.

Those are just my thoughts about it.

I find it hard to accept change. On my way home from work my best friend texted me and said he could be moving in three months. I felt my lungs deflate in the most painful manner possible. I wanted to say something witty, and cheerful, knowing that I probably wasn't the only one of us feeling bad about this... but, as the selfish person I am, I turned the ringer off my phone and buried it in the bottom of my bag.

My father aggravated me the whole way home, as he always does. I barely even noticed after the text, and what I did notice, I yelled at him irritably for doing it. (I feel bad for him though, sometimes. I think he tries to make me smile... the only thing is, I hate the method he uses for his tries, and he doesn't realize it. Even though I tell him constantly, he doesn't honestly know I'm serious.) When we were almost home, he did say something that almost made me laugh, but I instinctively tried to kill that laugh right away, but as that laugh burned in the back of my throat, I realized that in its last dying moments, it was a cry that was being killed - not a laugh. Dying cries burn like hell.

I told my parents I wanted to practice piano at church because I liked the way it sounded better there than at my piano at home, which was true, but mostly, if I was going to cry, I didn't want an audience. When I got to the church, I noticed there were people there cleaning it. That sucked. However, it seemed that they were almost done. I walked inside the empty chapel and the first thing I noticed, after I turned the lights on, were the flowers. There were flowers everywhere. There were these two easel-shaped flower holders in front of the stand, with big bouquets in them.

The first thing that came to mind was, funeral.

There had been a funeral here.

That nearly did me in. My throat was on fire and my head felt like it was going to explode.

I shuffled over to the piano and sat down on the bench. I had to rest my head on the music stand and take deep breaths in just so that regular breathing wasn't painful. In the end, I did cry a little. A little was all I needed, and I was okay for the moment. I played piano craptastically for about half an hour, got little accomplished, then called my parents to come pick me up.

It wasn't until I was leaving the chapel and turning off the lights that it occurred to me that the flowers there could have been for a wedding instead. There was no distinction in color combination that gave me any hit of which it was though. At that moment, I couldn't decide what was more pathetic - wedding flowers or funeral flowers. (as, I've always found flowers pointless.) I then decided the most pathetic flowers are the ones where you can't tell.

Yours truly,

Sore.