It is just that this realism is heightened recently with a deep nudging feeling that the “love book” article I have written, only portrays some tiny neurons of idealism present in my cells and some where in our everyday life, the pictures aren’t really that lovely.
In the Victorian web, it says that unlike Platonism and Philosophical Realism (or Idealism), Realism assumes that reality inheres in the here and now, in the everyday and emphasizes the importance of the ordinary, the ordinary person and the ordinary situation.
A friend of mine often sent me a message that says: “Please pray for J today, he is undergoing treatment.” The messages are pretty straightforward. Her husband has been fighting cancer for unbearable time. With each treatment her husband undergoes, her message seeks a prayer. The messages often arrived impromptu in the morning, and being a bed potato I am, I try as faithful as I can to respond timely. In the midst of all sleepiness, I often felt the pain for my friend who inadvertently is afraid and sad. She is an ordinary lady, with a lovely wonderful husband I met once in a company retreat. One of her sons is a special kid, with a low intelligence quotient yet wonderfully pleasant boy. I like her stories of courtship when young, how she met her husband and survived poverty and become self sufficient as years goes. As I write this, I reckoned J and my friend are still battling another set of breaking news from the doctor - he has nine months left to live.
The last message I got from her was: “My life will change but I will go on.” I no longer received the prayer request message from her since but she is receptive to anyone getting in touch with her.
Deep pain, fear, hurt, loss and many other dire emotions we dread to experience, these are the juxtaposition of love. I always felt compelled to discern the causes behind all these emotions.
Another day I sat listening to another lady spoke bitterly of life. She is still coming to terms of the demise of her husband who passed away a year ago in a heart attack. Bluntly, she swears of no existence of any higher divine in the universe, she ridiculed the need for prayers. “Why pray? What is the use of praying for comfort or strength? If God created everything and peace, why then is there suffering?” There is absolutely no religion present in this world and I can tell you I met a man who taught me this, there is no need for any religion or prayers because one reap no benefits from them. She went on to talk about her special son and lamented about the difficulties in bringing him up.
There are tears in her eyes. I am sad that she is unable to grasp the goodness of life after wading through the muck and mire. I shuddered at the extremity of thoughts that is so stubbornly and deeply embedded in her. I see the dark night of the soul, the soul that after going through turmoil and pain becomes a shriveled shadow that lost belief or any faith in the higher divine and the universe.
Both ladies having same child who require special needs, one losing her partner, the other was left without. Both reacted differently; one claiming life will go on heroically, the other completely devoid of spirituality but filled with bitterness. What juxtaposition of love.
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.
Walt Whitman - Song of Myself
