And, as the painkillers begin to do their jobs....

I forgot to add tags to my last post, which is pretty apt when you think about it. I might add them to this one if I remember - which I expect will really confuse some people, but hey, I'm sure you get the idea!

I've always believed that everything happens in the way and in the sequence it does, for a reason. I mean, these blogs - I don't really plan what I'm going to write - it's just thinking aloud really. Or whatever the word is that describes the writing equivalent of 'thinking aloud', to be more precise. And so, here I am - having just referred to Ecclesiates 4:9, which says, two are better than one because they have a good return for their work, and then, quite unwittingly, I reveal I've taken some painkillers for my headache, and that they're now beginning to do their work. And how many painkillers did I take? Two...

Sometimes it's very hard to imagine what possible reason there might be, for life's events. I mean the kinds of events for which the painkillers don't work...

Just a couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of making contact with a young relative whom I knew suffered from a life-shortening illness. His immediate family (with whom I'd also had relatively little contact up to that point) were getting kind of desperate, as he was already choosing to not use the drugs that could prolong his life by a few years; and what I thought I saw was a situation whereby he didn't really feel he had anything sufficiently desirable to try to live on for.

For you see, this is where western society really can't see the wood for the trees. They want to solve problems and cure illnesses, and, while nobody could ever fault the worthiness of their intentions - quite often, life's just not like that. As I shared the other day, I'm a male survivor of childhood sexual abuse: and all the counselling and therapies under the sun aren't going to change that. What's done is done - some of my wounds might heal up a bit in time, but they're not going to be erased from history: I am damaged, and that's that. And my relative is going to die as a young man. It's horrendously tragic, and so sad that his loved ones can hardly bear to think about it - but it's fact: it's going to happen, whether we like it, or not.

So as a society, would we not be better diverting some of our energies into supporting people to live with the lives that they have? Ever since I made personal contact with him, I've tried to respect my relative's choices. It's mighty hard, but it's the right thing to do. Concentrate on the here and now, worry about the future when the future comes - and for pity's sake, let go of the past. Inevitably the past will have shaped what you have to work with in the present anyway; and you can't re-live the past - you can only live in the present. So, let's help people to live with what they have, eh?