Gogol's insight

Recently, I picked up Nikolai Gogol and some of his work. It's sad that I never read much of him in college. Not that I would trade him for Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or Chekhov... but I wish I at least read his "The Overcoat" or "Nevsky Prospekt" at least once then...

“What an amazing world we live in!” I thought to myself the other day as I walked along Nevsky musing over these two stories: ‘How strange, how inscrutable the games fate plays with us! Do we ever attain the object of our desires? Do we ever achieve that to which all our efforts seem to be directed? Everything happens the wrong way round. To one Providence has given a pair of splendid horses, and he rides along indifferently, oblivious of their beauty, while another, whose heart is fired with a passion for horses, is forced to go on foot and must content himself with licking his tongue at the handsome beasts which gallop past. One fellow has an excellent cook, but, alas, is unlucky enough to possess such a small mouth that it cannot accommodate more than two pieces of meat, while another has a big mouth…but, alas, has to content himself with some sort of German concoction of potatoes. What strange games fate plays with us!” 

- Nevsky Prospekt

We know this. But he said it right.

Irrelevant

In dire circumstances this weekend I opened up the book "The Problem of Pain" by C.S. Lewis hoping to find some semblance of sense of the shit I put myself through.  The idea of the title is telling enough.  I forgot how prim yet lucid Lewis wrote.  I haven't read any prose of his style in recent times; no one writes that way anymore. I only got as far as the introduction to find Lewis expressing his gentle disclaimer that the book wasn't what you're hoping for when you find a book of that title (never-mind the author himself being a professor):

“... When pain is to be born, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.” - C.S. Lewis

 His book was more of an intellectual discourse. Not particularly what I needed at the time since it was technically irrelevant to what I was hoping for... but I continued.

There's a poignant passage somewhere in the book -- I'm going off memory now -- where Lewis talks about how sad it might be to actually be in God's position.  Imagine being someone's last "choice". When all of a person's bridges are burned and all he or she has left is you for comfort or solace, or, daresay, help... that's not a particularly pleasant place for you.  You know this person is just there to see you now because you're the only person who's left.  Be it because of your kind nature or what other people say about you being a nice person -- whatever -- but this person all of sudden considers you a friend as a last resort. You should know better than to lend help to this leach.

Yet, that's God. And he's okay with that.  He knows full well the truth (no chance guess here) that you're only trying to get in good connections with him because He's the only one left. And really, He's okay with that . He loves you nonetheless. We might call God's position sad but he's okay with that. Ain't that something about Him?

There's a whole bunch of other stuff that Lewis is erudite about but I think I got what Lewis is saying.

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You know you've got it bad when you start reading Bukowski. In theory his writing is exceptionally cathartic but you'd never actually want to be in a lot of Bukowski's positions. He often writes about stuff when stuff isn't how we'd like it be. But yet... here I am... reading "Gambler's All".
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Bad things and how things are when it's bad is great to write about. Living it is another story.