Misery, beauty and the cherry tree

It seems that everyone around me is in, what appears to be, a permanent state of distress.

Breaking up with boyfriends (out of the top of my head at least 8 people are going through this); enduring less than good jobs (almost everyone but Joe - who is just happy for no reason - and my sister - who doesn't have one); just plain suffering at work (a couple of folks); missing home (half of the people I count as friends); hating home (about a quarter).

Oh and of course not to forget the lions in the Zoo: unreciprocated love - including wondering what the hell went wrong with the love (I swear it was here a couple of months ago!); and good old money.

These are few examples which in their limited number cover a fairly large range of causes of misery.

I read somewhere that maybe the reason old people are so wise is that there are a limited amount of dilemmas in peoples' lives and that after a while standing on the street watching people kiss and fight, and, run and stop, and try, and fail, and succeed and celebrate...they kind of have a pattern it figured out.

After all, how many different hook up and break up stories can there be? How many perfect jobs are out there?

And yet many of us suffer in silence, or at least insist that no one can understand; and - this is the actual point of this post - we get creative.

We become sensitive to music, and books; and movies mean so much more, and we write, and we read poems; and we cry to falling Autumn leafs, and we actually analyze, paying attention to small things in our daily lives; we seek in the sphere of accumulated human knowledge a sign; and in our personal history an answer.

In a strange way I am more fulfilled by life when I'm distressed. A single word, a song, a paint touches me because I am hurt and exposed.

I suppose its like that for most people, and some of us are gifted and create art out of this.

Our misery brings out our desire to connect, to understand and express this world - our world. This is the beauty in us which allows us to create from the agony.

So maybe agony is beautiful in its own miserable way.