419. Bad Experiences

An experience occurred. It happened. I also acknowledge that it happened to me, but I refuse to think about it in that way. Doing so would make it too intimate, and I don’t want that because the experience was not a good one.

In fact, it was positively horrible. It showed me something about the world that I didn’t want to know. But even worse than that, it showed me something about myself that I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know it because knowing is inescapable. Now I have to do something with this new knowledge.

I have to do something with it because I cannot bear to have it floating around untethered in my mind. I want to have a reason for it. I want to be able to explain it, because explaining it means I can confine it to one part of my reality, a part that can never fully encompass me. And that means I won’t have to think about it any more.

But within this line of thought lurks a hidden danger. It’s easy to miss because my attention is locked on the possibility of escape. I want to escape because I’m attached to my understanding of my identity, and I do not want that identity to be unsettled by this new knowledge.

As I try to maintain my existing identity, I block myself from reaching a broader understanding — not just of myself, but of other people too. For everything that implicates me also implicates others, and vice versa. Every horror that exists in this world not only includes me but the entire world as well. Like everyone, I am never entirely separate from the world.

By allowing myself an easy escape from difficult knowledge, I not only fail to understand myself but also the world I live in. I diminish my own possible joy because I prevent myself from reaching the awareness I need to live joyfully. Such awareness is possible only if I allow myself to look carefully at even my worst experiences.