The xxx pleasure and pain

Life's a funny old thing; it begins, has a middle and an end or conclusion. I don't know anyone who recalls their own beginning, or end for that matter, but that middle section is often remembered by most mainly because we're living it day to day. It's what we have, the present moment, and in my opinion should must be respected. I do that by having presence, practicing one hundred percent presence as often as I can in these middle bits of my life. I don't see another option that would work for me.

I'd say I have had a better life for it; that ethos of having presence, and I've had many pleasurable moments I remember fondly because of it...But I've had my share of pain, like most people have. A coin always has two sides...But maybe a better analogy could be, a diamond has many facets. I'm no diamond though, just man who does the best he can as often as possible.

Pleasure and pain

I wonder if the former would be as valuable to us without the latter. If one never feels pain would we even know the concept of pleasure? Hmm, that's deep...I'm just going to suggest that it's partly due to the pain, the bad moments we suffer, that the pleasure, those good moments, are so valued.

I recently experienced loss, the loss of something that was so incredibly valuable to me that I wasn't sure I could function without it. Connection, friendship, bond, a melding of hearts and minds...It doesn't matter how it's worded, only that it was. Pleasure...Then pain. A lot of it. I blamed myself of course; I tend to do that for some reason.

I'd think, through the fog of pain, about the pleasure and wonder if I'd feel it again, that feeling of belonging, togetherness and of being an intrinsic part of something complete. I didn't think I could. It felt like something so intertwined in my being had been torn from me and taken away. It felt...Painful. All the time. But then something changed.

My phone beeped; I ignored it because I didn't care. It wouldn't be her so why would I? Eventually I looked at the message though and it was her. The message was simple:

xxx

I know, not a long message but one that said more than I could explain in a thousand words. No, maybe I mean it meant more than I could explain in a thousand words. Those three little x's meant everything.

That was a while ago now, just another moment in the middle bit of my life but, in truth, more than that. It's not much to grasp onto, a tenuous link at best, but it brings something other than pain and something other than pleasure....It brings hope.

[A fiction - Because why not.]