Suffering

Sorrow… pain… shame… regret.  It is itself a tangible sadness that for all of our brief days and hours on Earth, most of us must bear the various tragedies and sufferings we are compelled to carry and by the cumulative weight or gravity of personal and collective history and error.  Where the world is staggering, incoherent and blind, from one human-created disaster to another, the fact remains (like some dusty fossil unearthed from the sedimentation of time and narrative) that we collectively bring these lamentations upon ourselves.  There is no meaning beyond what we make and there is no freedom from suffering beyond what we each and ourselves choose to shape.  One sadness begets another which in turn begets another and although we may never, ever fully dismount this particular carousel of grief (entropy and decay are written into physics and the Cosmos in an indelible manner); we might certainly endeavour to slow its speed a little.  Forgiveness is a good starting point.