Lust for life (15th of June 2013)
Many of those who win their fight against a serious illness become different persons. I wanted to write "better" and
"blessed", but I changed my mind because I think that moral qualifications are secondary and unsuitable in the
context of what I want to say. Besides, it wasn't a long ago when I heard about an event in which a lightning from
a clear blue sky (literally) struck some simple-minded happy fellow. After he recovered, the young man feared going
out in the open and, generally, stopped functioning "normally", in a way he functioned before the event. He is on
antidepressant therapy as I write.
In the same way, after a serious illness, some people become anxious; they are still afraid of the illness they
overcame, they are not sure of their victory. But, here I want to write of different cases, of cases when an individual
in an uneven fight with an ugly and tough opponent becomes stronger in each round, gradually coming to understanding that
his opponent feeds on his weaknesses and that he will overcome it only if he overcomes himself. These are the cases I
wanted to write about.
Such illnesses are blessing. Here, I used the word which spins around in my head for more than an hour. Those who
win such an illness won over their old selves and they got an opportunity to change the perspective, to take a
look at life from the mountain they climbed running, bearing on their backs a sticky, sweaty and rotten spook of
an illness. And then, when they stop on the top, with a restless heart and stunned mind, and when they look at the
place they started from, they realize that some things are not the way they seemed to be. Cars look small as ants from
here. A butterfly. Two emerald bugs on a flower. Sheep. Wind brings a bitter-pepper smell of grass. I inhaled with
all of my lungs.
And when they come down to people and cars, they come to understand that they cannot be the same anymore, that they cannot
be the persons who, sick and restless, started to climb on the mountaintop. They lust for life and they can very well
separate the things which are good for life from those which oppose life. Strengthened by their magnificent victory,
such people often change some things. They leave the philatelic society, paintball team and union. They stop greeting
colleagues they saw every day for twenty years. They end decadeslong friendships on their birthday. They leave their
wife and children. They start to investigate and obsessively listen to baroque music, uncovering an ocean of feelings
in it, which was until yesterday hidden from them, though they heard a lot of it in a music school. They decide to
paint persistently, not quitting even after disastrous defeats from water and brush - they won over a much worse
adversary than a pigment too dense.
I remember high school and faculty and "smart" discussions with my colleagues. We spoke then of our age-mates who attended
transcendental meditation classes or joined the happy people with shaved heads who sang mantras on the square - I haven't
seen them for long time - with a dose of patronizing compassion: "You know, he was seriously ill." To me and to
my interlocutors it meant a disqualification of the one in question, as if the new insight in the world he got was
somehow corrupted by illness and the state of his mind which was not coldly rational. Today, of course and happily (I am
happy that I am no longer the same fool I was in the high school) I think completely differenty. Today I think that people
who win over serious illnesses can often see more clearly.
Last night I looked into shadow for long time. When you learn to see around you in search for color, things you had
no idea about reveal to you, which were known to great painters for centuries. The shadow from last night was
mostly blue-green, but it had some imprints of violet in places.
Imagine you have a month to live. Many people are often confronted with such a fact. What would you, of all
the things that you do today, continue doing? What would, of all the things which annoy you today, continue
to annoy you? What would you start doing in this month, which you may never have started were you not know
that your end is so near? More than a year ago I watched von Trier's movie
>> "Melancholia". This,
for my aesthetics irritating movie considers the collision of the Earth with some asteroid, planet, whatever,
which is known to take place at a precisely calculated date. People in the time left do all sorts of things, but
it is not really necessary to imagine an asteroid or planet to start living properly. The collision will certainly
take place, only none of us knows exactly when. Which is not all that important. The mountain should be climbed
irrespectively of the time left.
A large part of our being passes automatically. In doing things which we "need" or "must" do in
order to survive (not true). In performing rituals which must be persistently repeated so that one could pass
through the world of people-machines undisturbed. In constant naming of things and categories, daily repeated so
to give the legitimacy to the automatic existence. Such things depersonalize us, they take from us that, in itself
fragile construct which we call self, a unique and individual opportunity to be a rapidly burning out spark
which will drown in the darkness of nonexistence. A struggle against illness, among other things, brings to
consciousness this automatism which was installed in us by upbringing and surrounding.
Sitting on a super-secret beach on island of Krk I listen to the sea, I watch two loons which turn back afraid to swim over in our presence. In front of me is the watercolor paper which I recently bought and which I don't particularly like - the last one was better. This is the place I visited in order to get well and which cured me in the end. I question myself, seeking for the lust for life I found then.
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Last updated on 15th of June 2013.