The meaning of suffering
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| Sat, 01-31-2004 - 12:30pm |
Something from the Letters of Oscar Wilde which touched me. Just wanted to share it with everyone (and besides it's helping to distract me from the urge to call XOM):
I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he said :
"Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark. And has the nature of Infinity"
But while there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my sufferings were to be endless, I could not bear them to be without meaning. Now I find hidden away in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all. That something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is Humility.
It is the last thing left in me, and the best: the ultimate discovery at which I have arrived: the starting point for a fresh development. It has come to me right out of myself, so I know that it has come at the proper time. It could not have come before, nor later. Had anyone told me of it, I would have rejected it. Had it been brought to me, I would have refused it. As I found it, I want to keep it. I must do so. It is the one thing that has in it the elements of life, of a new life, a Vita Nuova for me. Of all things it is the strangest. One cannot acquire it, except by surrendering everything that one has. It is only when one has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it.
Now that I realise that it is in me, I see quite clearly what I have got to do, what, in fact, I must do. And when I use such a phase as that, I need not tell you that I am not alluding to any external sanction or command. I admit none. I am far more individualistic than I ever was. Nothing seems to me of the smallest value except what one gets out of oneself. My nature is seeking a fesh mode of self-realisation. That is all I am concerned with. And the first thing that I have got to do is to free myself from any possible bitterness of feeling towards you...........
still as long as i remained free from all resentment, hardness and scorn, I would be able to face life with much more calm and confidence than I would were my body in purple and fine line, and the soul within it sick with hate. And I should really have no difficulty in forgiving you. When you really want it you will find it waiting for you.
