Pain Relief

The best is yet to come.

Where do I get off claiming that?

I recently read a writer who dismissed this statement, and other sentiments like it. She went on to say how life is hard and we’re all doing our best to just get through it.  Life throws so much hardship at us, she said, like unexpected cancer diagnoses and sudden infant death syndrome. People who are “living their best life now are probably lying.”

I understand this. Misery loves company. In the darkest days of my loss and grief, I held everyone in suspicion who had a smile on their face. Attempts to cheer me up were met by my smug dismissal. 

But I don’t think that way any longer.

In late 2016, when I was standing on the edge of the abyss, looking down, I could not imagine life getting any better. Suicidal ideation is an attempt to assuage the pain in life. It makes sense to me from personal experience, and I have learned to back away from the edge and embrace a way of believing that has changed the way I live now.

Circumstances are fluid. And there is danger for me to base my belief system on something that changes so rapidly.

Pain must be reckoned with.  The headache demands an aspirin. The back pain demands a steroid. And soul is no different. Emotional pain needs an answer, and so the search begins to find relief.

Cynicism and sarcasm is one such solution. Laugh at the pain. Laugh at those who seem to have gotten a pass, those who “just don’t get it.” Laugh and the world laughs with you,

But show me a sarcastic person and I’ll show you a person in deep, unmitigated pain.

There’s an ancient proverb that states:

Like a maniac shooting flaming arrows of death is one who deceives their neighbor and says, “I was only joking!”

This is the impact of the sarcastic cynic. Behind the humor is a world of hurt, made worse with the disclaimer, “Don’t be so serious. I’m kidding.”

Sarcastic humor can be funny, I just can’t go there. I don’t want to pitch my tent in a place of pain and stay stuck there for the rest of my life. I have places I want to go. I have new vistas I want to see. I want to keep climbing the mountain.

Call me an idealist. Guilty as charged. But it is possible to hold reality in concert with an ideal. Life isn’t black or white, this or that. It’s both.

So regardless of my circumstances, I will always be compelled to believe that better is possible and that hope can prevail. That’s why I stick by these words,

The best is yet to come.