Sep 20

 Taking a regular dose of meds just to even out any potential gastro effects. So far. It's ok.

The gout is stubbornly refusing to budge from a grumpy painful but not the end of the world stage. I am limping around but have movement.

Painkiller use is down - I've stopped the codeine. Pains are up. It's really apparent just how much pain and inflammation I have from a well dosed painkiller plan to a low dose painkiller plan. It's something I am bearing in mind and mulling over that maybe when shit is very bad, I need to drop back onto some painkillers. Generally I avoid taking meds as far as I am able, and until these recent shit years, painkiller use for me basically never happened beyond the obligatory fistful of aspirin to attempt to control migraines, or the dabble with low dose aspirin to help with feeling better ( which I didn't realise at the time is a massive gout risk - low dose aspirin causes gout.. who knew.. )

I feel like things are slowly improving.

I feel beat up. Fragile. And as ever. Just. Ended. That feeling of just being in the cinema watching the credits roll never leaves me. Like I am in some kind of purgatory waiting space. Just. Waiting.

I am not sure if that passes or this is how I will be forever.

Attempts at bucking the system. Going out. Talking to people. Doing things. They all fall flat. I can't sustain them. Ultimately they feel hollow. Don't get me wrong. Talking to people is always good in the moment. But. There is a difference here between short term and long term. I think it's something that gets perpetually missed.

It's hard to describe. But it's like the difference between life, and a moment. You can do something in a moment and it has no real impact on your life. And vice versa. Sometimes a moment will impact your life but it's rare.

You can bring soup to someone who is infirm, can't make dinner. And you have given them a meal. A smile. A thought.

And off you go. Secure in the knowledge you have done a good thing.

But what happens when you go.

What does that infirm person do for the other 23 hours of the day. The other 4 weeks of the month you are not there.

You have not changed their life, their path, their reality.

It is apparent to me how common this thinking is. I am not sure whether it's just a fundamental gap in understanding, something not thought about, or whether it's a willful misunderstanding - not wanting to properly understand someones plight, or just a thinly veiled outright selfishness and relief that it's not you.

I think you can probably see this best in how people treat homeless people. At best you get a thought, and a bit of money pressed into a hand. And then people hastily step on by.

Don't get me wrong here. I am not saying everyone should be able to engage fully with everyone and share all their pain at a moments notice, and if you don't do that, you're a terrible person. People are different. Different skill sets. Good days. Bad days. Not everyone is cut out for helping people. Just like not everyone is cut out to be a deep sea diver, or a heart surgeon. And even the best deep sea diver can have a bad day, and call in sick.

More of the problem is the expectation people have. Pressing that small sum of money in a hand. Well. I helped. What more can I do. The problem should now fix.

But throwing one rock at a building site does not a house build. Despite expectations that you helped and therefore all should be good now, right ?

No.

In fact from one brutal point of view, all you've really done is assuaged your own guilt, and actually done very little to fuck all to help. Truly helping takes a huge amount of effort and a monstrous amount of commitment. In fact. Too much really for a single person. Society is too much for a single person. It's one of the reasons society exists. Things can scale in a team more than they ever can as a solo. And it's not just the multiplication of effort. It's more than that. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A team of 10 can take on much more than a set of 10 solos can. Because it comes down to burn out rates. Resting rates. Sustainability.

But I digress a bit.

Back to the point.

There is a difference between moments and life.

For myself, I can engineer moments. I can go out and meet and talk to people. I can go for a walk. Visit a beach. All in spite of my life pointing the opposite direction. A thoroughly negative horror of hopelessness and sadness. I can fight. No. Fuck it. Look. I am doing the thing. And setup those moments. This is hardcore "Good Pysch" and following the recommendations for mental health et al.

But. In the end. They are just moments.

They are not changing my life. They have not changed the direction of the ship. Or the weather. Or anything else. And for me personally, they have not changed that calculation of the nihilistic universe. Of the cruelty of life and passing time.

There is a hope in there - and some are adamant it is the wisdom - that if you perservere at enough of those moments, the small moments end up turning the ship.

Sometimes. Maybe. In some circumstances. But it's a fragile thing. I and I think it is based on some predetermined circumstances, that you dont stare into the nihilistic hole too long, and all sorts of other shit. In a modern world where the existential threat to humanity grows apace, and having a cheery outlook on the world is difficult, if not delusional, that whole philosophy of make moments, things get better, it'll be ok starts to be severely challenged. Not everything ends well.

Veering off the point again.

The point I am trying to make here is. There is a massive difference between the moment and life. Between an event and a path. The - maybe unthinking - expectation of many is that a nudge of an event is enough that as if by magic, the path is completely changed, all things are good. But the reverse is true. The event is a tiny thing compared to the mass of the path.

It is easy to arrange a birthday party.

It is hard to turn a life around.

Understand the difference. And the amount of effort each takes.

People in my life at the moment are full of ideas for birthday parties.

None of them address the life.

Paint the house whatever colour you like. I don't care. The house is still the house.

People get frustrated. Confused. Upset. When their solutions don't land. Part of it is that people care, and they don't like seeing someone they care for in pain. Must Do Something. Part of it is the rejection of their silver bullet answers. Few like to be told they are wrong. How dare you. If only you'd try the new 12 part mud based vitamin diet, you'd be fine. And of course the next step after that is to throw up hands and shift the blame back to you. Well. If you're not even going to try the 12 part mud based vitamin diet, the problem is obviously you.

There is no easy answer to any of this.

Much of this comes down to the nature of life itself. The meaning of life. Or the lack of it. The dancing on the edge of the nihilistic abyss that we all do - whether we are aware of it or not. Our insignificance not only in the face of an effective infinite universe, but also within our own lives where nothing we do has weight or matters, we are forgotten. And yet we strive. For what ? Children ? Comfort ? Love ? Self actualisation.

Leaning into that nihilistic awareness is a problem. It is better not to be aware of it at all. Innocence is its own protection. The doggo does not consider the nihilistic universe. And is far happier and self actualised for it. Their highest goals are for a good explore, a fast run, an interesting stick, something to eat, and a cool river. And they achieve it. And are never bored of it. Compared to us, they are off the charts in how well they fit into the world. We, are some fucked up dysfunctional monkey, wracked with haunting visions of how insignificant it is. Not so the doggo.

Veering off again.

There is a point to this. There is too much to go into and fill out to really properly address it.

But I think the point comes down to.

Part of what I feel at the moment, where I can feel isolated, alone, and at an end, is that whole surveying the path thing, as opposed to an event. People are fixated on the small events. I have my eye on the whole path. The two hours you spend chatting with someone is just the two hours. The other 22 hours is the majority of what's going on. You see this. Over and over with suicide. Oh they seemed so happy. Then they are dead. Happy in the event. Suicidal on the path.

It's a deep rabbit hole. About selflessness vs selfishness. How common it is. Self preservation. The nature of unconditional love. About whether you should just let the weak burn out. Survival of the fittest.

Anyway.

This whole thing today is not meant to be framed as a what relationship do we all have amongst ourselves ( although it absolutely extends to that ). But more like, what relationship we have with ourselves. And whether the small efforts, the events we fix in the hope that it changes our path are effective. Or rather how effective. And how often they fail and just feel false. Because it is the single pebble against a landslide. So feelings of futility are perhaps to be expected. Expectations of changing the landslide with a single pebble are foolish.

You could also put it another more cynical way.

Do the lies we tell ourselves do much for us ?

But then. By a brutal standard. Almost everything we tell ourselves is a lie. It is the subjective nature of our existence within the world. Everything is an interpretation. Nothing is objective. And secondary effect. What you feel about that interpretation can differ depending on whether it was a sunny day, or a cloudy day. It is a stupidly fragile system. We can never experience the objective universe, we experience subjectively what things are like. We can hear things differently. See things different. Two people in the same room can have a different experience of the same thing. And then beyond that. We have a meta level. Of what we think and feel about that experience. An experience we have constructed in our heads as "reality". We then pass judgement on our work of artifice. That two people standing side by side can have a different experience. And in one can cause sadness and another happiness. There is no shared wisdom here. Just each person bumping along desperately trying to make sense of the shit going on around them, with continual perception and communication failures. In a way, it's remarkable we do as well as we do.

Anyway. Getting all very high theoretical.

The on the ground emotional experience. Hopeless. Events vs Path.

A hard "reality" to live in.