werther

A little over a year ago I started writing what is probably a character sketch, similar to Goethe’s Young Werther, only in the third person (and sometimes first) of a nameless individual. The majority of words I write are for myself, but I thought I would post some of the entries about this individual because in many ways we share the same perspective.

8/26/04

At most points in his day life does not strike him as a cohesive experience, not all his actions and not the collected existence of everyone around him. Most individuals seem to be more or less exclusive with their time and not inclusive. They don’t want to know others and they don’t want others to know them. In his more lucid moments he has a strong sense that what separates people is exactly that which binds them together; the personal struggles everyone has to cope with, the celebrations and the tragedies that have marked our paths and the presence they keep in our daily effort to survive and succeed, to make progress while providing safe travel for those who come after us. Never truly understood by anyone else and barely understanding ourselves, we corner our truest impressions of life and save them for ourselves, afraid of the ridicule and judgment that will come from those who might see our lives as we see them. All our parents soon die and so many friendships fade into the distance like ships to the other side of the world, and we never understand the full impact and importance of those friends until we understand that we shall never see them again. No one is content with the world they are given, some surrender to the inevitable while others work to obtain that which they know doesn’t exist in this world, peace and happiness, but their effort is their delusion, finding new ways to cope with bitterness of all our crumbled expectations and the disappointment of dreams fulfilled and their ephemeral gratification. Looking for ways to savor the sweetness of our best moments and then hang them on our walls as memories, reminders of happier days, their memory making us sad, making us remember why we continue to exist. We may develop affection for disappointment and an affinity for pain caused by our loved ones; it is the truest type of feeling and the deepest sense of our existence, because it’s what binds us all together, our unifying theme, the unsung anthem of humanity. And while everyone lonely, seeking companionship and belonging yet never satisfied, we are all lonesome together. It is the inevitable position of our species, seldom talked about but always alluded to. We desperately want to be satisfied and enjoy all that there is to find joy in, yet we also want others to feel what we are reaching for, the intangible happiness of our childhood and its lingering presence in our dreams. So many people so far removed from our piece of the world are in so much pain and suffer to degrees we can only read about. We the wealthy cannot make this life into an enjoyable existence, much less of a chance the poor and forgotten have. There are some who are disillusioned and idealistic, having become numb to their own existence, to the existence of everyone else. They fail to see the rain because they are too busy imaging a sun beyond the clouds, too simple to know the profundity of despair in existence, too self absorbed to recognize the chords that bind men together. He thinks these thoughts and feels their gravity, he thinks of life, he thinks it’s cumbersome.