November 11, 2006

  • A topic entry for the Internet Island Topic Post 6.00 

    Written by Michael F. Nyiri Feb. 7, 2006 (Not a "Best Of" article. I just wanted to post something today, and found this entry from the archives.) I wrote this entry for the "Dichotomy of Life" topic post. All the topic posts in the Internet Island are designed to get you thinking about life, happiness, the world, and how to better enlighten ourselves while we're "here". You might or might not have read this entry when it appeared on my WhenWordsCollide site back in February. If not, I hope you enjoy a sampling of one of my own essays! MFN 11/11/06. Stay tuned for the next Topic Post, which I will put up here on the 13th, which is Monday.

    A child is born
    Another one dies
    Somebody laughs
    And somebody cries
    Merriment, happiness
    Sadness and gloom
    All manner of emotion
    from gladness to doom
    Mixed in the blender
    Felicity, strife
    We have ups and downs
    The dichotomy of life


    "There's good news and bad news...Whattaya wanna hear first?"

    From the moment we are born, to our final breath of life, our existence is filled with the presence of great happiness, great sadness, accomplishments, disappointments. The good exists with the bad. Fear follows fulfillment. In Christian mythology, the first humans, Adam and Eve, lived in Paradise, a place where such dichotomy did not exist. Their lives were perfect, but they were not satisfied with this perfection. Jehovah placed in the center of Paradise a Tree of Knowledge of the Difference Between Good and Evil. Goaded by the Snake, Eve persuaded Adam to taste of this knowledge, and the two were bansihed from Paradise forever. Human existence since then has been filled with this "knowledge" and this "knowledge" is what differentiates for us these disparate slivers of feelings.
    In Eastern religions, the forces of yin and yang govern the order of the universe. One cannot definitely experience true enlightenment if one has not sampled the agonies of existence firsthand. Some lives are lived over and over again until enlightenment is attained. This is our test. Our lives are filled with the often conflicting experiences of existence. When a life is over, the rest of us grieve for that life. When the life has begun we celebrate, and a part of that celebration is carried over into our grief when that life ends. There are diseases of the brain, like bipolarity, which tends to give certain people great mood swings which imprints happiness and sadness equally and indiscriminately into their lives sometimes so close together that they appear to be happening at the same time.
    Life is not fair, nor is it perfect. And that lack of perfection and fair play is what makes it infinitely interesting.


    My personal existence is rife with examples of this dichotomy.

    I was born half of a pair of twins, and my other half, my sister, died during childbirth. My head was partially crushed, and had to be "molded" by the delivery doctor during and right after my birth. I've suffered headaches and mood swings all my life, and I can actually feel the bumps on my head where the skull had rippled. I could have died, but I lived, and as a result of this life, which has been loving, creative, and ebullient, I have had some problems. I think this illustrates very well, right from my own beginning, this dichotomy of life.

    During childhood, I was deemed fairly intelligent, and my IQ is rather high. But my physical body was never as developed as those of some of the other kids, and I took my share of licks from the bullies. One of my very best friends was one of the most physically endowed boys on campus, however, so I had a buddy to help keep me from being the target of some of the nastier boys in school. I was granted brains but not brawn. A dichotomy during childhood.

    The year 1974 would have been my graduation year from college, but instead it was the year I dropped out. Following the traumas associated with my father's death, at 54, of his 13th heart attack, surely not a very lucky number for him, I just couldn't concentrate on studies and schooling, and had to become the family patriarch, and care for my mother, who was hospitalized as a result of her bilateral stroke and the dialysis she had to go through when her kidneys failed. As it happens, "as one door closes, another opens", and my career in retail management took a turn for the better. I was granted opportunity in the face of disappointment. Happiness on the one hand, and tragedy on the other.

    I've fallen in love many times, and have been rebuffed, and I have rebuffed those who have fallen in love with me. I have felt such great absence of purpose that I have contemplated suicide a number of times. I know depression, and the pain of lonliness. But I have been granted the gift of perception and am able to write my feelings and observations quite well. I have been writing poetry since the age of 14, and a lot of people have told me that reading my poetry has helped them sort through their own demons. My sadness has stifled the sadness of others. I am grateful that the dichotomy of life has provided me with tools for helping both myself and others in this way. My schooling in college might have ended, and my chosen career in education never happened, but my words have served as a "teacher" for a lot of people who have felt the same way I have, and have acted perhaps differently because of something they read that I wrote.

    My own limbs have turned against me. I have lived with a prosthetic hip for over ten years. The hip replacement stopped a lot of pain I suffered through for many years, but now ten years later, I feel a lot of pain again. However the pleasure I feel when the pain goes away almost makes up for the pain that is suffered. Another illustration of this dichotomy. I think the human spirit can survive anything given the chance, and with hope.

    I have a great deal of credit card debt, and trying to maneuver through this mountain of debt causes some consternation, but when I realize that the "toys" I have around me, my sports car, bigscreen TVs, computers, and movie collection, are things which help me to enjoy my free time and never get bored, then I know that the one cancels the other, and I really can't complain.

    No amount of depression can stop the glee and bliss I know life offers as well. No pending doom or news of strife and sadness can quell my ecstasy and boisterous happiness at the knowledge that I am here, now, able to impact others, and able to care for myself. Since my roommate was diagnosed with cancer, I have chosen to concentrate on the things I like about him, rather than the hundreds of little things I don't like, because in a few years all of these trifles might only be memories, and I would much rather  concentrate on the positve memories than the negative.

    I hardly remember my parents, or any suffering I survived during my youth and early adulthood. The memories I choose to harbor are the good ones. I can summon my mother's smile. My father's laugh. My siblings are forever together in agreement in my memories, and never quarrelling against each other or me. Life's detours and hazards are few compared with the clear skies of circumstance and the soft wind of love's perception.

    Life is strange. We are all in it together. If I can reach out and touch another life with mine, then I have a purpose on the planet, and I will persevere and eventually find the true happiness and bliss that has been afforded me. I want to "touch humanity's face" and I want to feel the touch of humanity returned. I want to shake the hand of hallelujah, and stomp the suffering ashes of inconsistency into the ground with my heels.

    Life is strange. But life is good.
    Life is a dichotomy, and how we deal with this is how we survive.

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