I left work later than usual last night. A couple of major things have been brewing away and the one upside of all this busy-ness is how fast each day is passing. Mondays can be slow sometimes but in recent weeks, I have been grateful for busy days because even Mondays passed by pretty quickly.

The Joy Davidman entry linked up with another blog which described the author’s pain. Yet, in spite of the pain, in spite of the admission of negativity arising from the pain, there was accomplishment. There appears to be a countervailing point of sorts.

I cannot recall if it was a you tube clip, an article or a book I came across recently which said maybe life isn’t like a road with up’s and down’s. That piece suggested instead, that life at any one point could maybe look more like a dual way road. At the same time where something wonderful is being experienced, one experiences pain and suffering, in parallel. It is less a case of having a wonderful experience now and confronted by challenges a few weeks or months later. It is more a case having both those contrasting experiences at or about the same time.

It might have been Rick Warren who said that and I might have heard or read someone quote him.

I don’t know what this means in practice, and whether it helps us deal with events life throw at us. I guess understanding – part of the picture if not the whole – always helps.

And so while Tress and I busy ourselves with work on weekdays, we cast an eye up north to also note that Kiddo appears to be keeping herself busy. The only one whiling away the day is the little black jedi.

We’ve been meaning to get rid of our 9 year old couch. It’s the one we got when we first got here back in 2004. It’s still alright but the way we’ve re-arranged the furniture last year, made this piece stand out like a sore thumb. We’ve lived with it for the past maybe 6-9 months now, wanting to get rid of it but not sure what the precise plans would look like. It’s especially hard to get rid of it because it’s Scruffi’s favourite piece of furniture. He is perched on the headrest of one corner for the most part of each day, looking out the window towards the park across the street.

The rest of us are busy however. With less connection with a wider body of people, my sense of others’ travails feels blunted. The blog author I referred to, appeared to have been in pain and I haven’t been in touch with someone like that for a while now. The feeling of reaching out and touching someone has been absent. I wonder if it will soon be filled with something else. I don’t want that to be something that puts things above people. In as much as there are people out there who needs help, there are those who has a need to be extending help.

The parallels of mixed experiences have I think, a replica of some sort in terms of busy-ness on the one hand and a need to connect on the other. There may be no link whatsoever but such is the nature of unfiltered and unprocessed experience I guess.

Related articles

• New Test Distinguishes Physical From Emotional Pain in Brain for First Time (healthland.time.com)
• The Role Stress Plays In Chronic Pain (ricardobuildingfitness.wordpress.com)
• Rick Warren’s Son Dies from Suicide (christianitytoday.com)
• Handy Tips For People Who Suffer From Back Pain (backpain-and-treatment.com)