there is no lesson except to survive
2003-08-22 : 10:04 a.m.

�If many remedies are prescribed
for an illness, you may be certain
that the illness has no cure.�

A. P. CHEKHOV
The Cherry Orchard

There is no simple way forward, no easy way.

�My husband is sleeping with some bitch he met on the internet...I don�t know what to do.�

Years of therapy and decades of therapeutic commercial culture have taught us to believe that there�s always a right way, a �healthy� way to �cope,� to move forward. As if life is truly rational, and it is only that we sometimes make the wrong counter-moves in moments of fear and weakness. If we only knew enough, only were calm enough...we could always learn the lesson, make the right move...walk forward with confidence and grace.

�What this test does show is that you are infected with HIV.�

But it�s not like that at all. There is no general principle by which all things work together for the Good. The idea that there is some benefit, some lesson, hidden in every painful moment is pure New Age fantasy�a desperate projection of meaning onto the wasteful wraths of fallen nature and fallen man. Pace Nietzsche, that which does not kill us may just leave us maimed and scarred...the walking wounded. There is no dignity in suffering, except in retrospect, a fantasy we concoct to suture the wound, to close over what life has excised.

�You may have cancer.�

The hard kernel of it, the horror we will do anything not to see: the world is fallen; nature is red in tooth and claw. Not just �tigers and trees and earthquakes� nature, but the nature that beats in the heart of the one you kiss goodnight, the one who says �I love you.� The one who looks back at you from the mirror. We are wounded, we are wounding. This is our condition, and no, there�s not always a lesson to be learned. Or rather, the only lesson is this: sometimes, survival is the best hope. Sometimes, it�s enough. And then...sometimes....on the rarest occasions, grace shines in.

�Let it come, as it will, and don�t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.�

Jane Kenyon

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