Assurance comes more with practice than with age. Of course, it is nothing unusual that people are learning certain things over time. Still, you can’t just rely on basic learning techniques and heuristics when it comes to emotions. Anyway, it is simply, not that simple.
I am sure about what I said to you, and why I’ve said that. Just to re-iterate for your clarity. I said – that I’ve never been surer in my life. I know it is a bold statement. I understand that someone may treat this with at least a bit of caution. Still, I stand for what I say.
Yes, I know what humility is. Doesn’t still come easy to me but I’ve been humbled so many times to learn the lesson. We’re talking about experiences on the verge of man’s breaking point. And I have been broken.
I also know the old Biblical “Pride goeth before the fall”. Like most wisdom from any of the Word’s holy scriptures, it is not a magical curse cast by the elders on misbehaving children. It embodies and reflects thousands of years of human experience. The most profound and most common one. Life after life. Generation after generation – we keep repeating the same mistakes, never learning. That’s why they are called – sins. So, I am aware of my pride. I still remember that it very narrowly almost killed me. The problem is, what Jordan Peterson rightly pointed out – nobody nowadays remembers that pride is a sin. It’s one of the 7 general ones, and in my case the most dangerous.
My pride, you see took me to a place where I would swear at God with a vague intention to deprive Him of any willingness to help me. Yet, like Jewish Rabbis’ Kahal at Auschwitz denying the possibility of His existence (the crimes they witnessed seemed to be proving that point), this was an actual act of faith. I know – it seems a little entangled, but it is that sort of logic that cannot be simply tested with Mill’s canon. It is the emotional side of it that matters. More or less the act of getting in an argument with God is already an engagement with His Power. And that will surely change your life. Even if proud, boastful, and foolish in its essence it will produce in some strange karmic way the effect of katharsis. Sooner or later.
But this time I am not afraid. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi said to his soldiers before leading the last charge at Iwo Jima: “Do what you think is right, because it is right”. He did not mean – follow me. That great poet and thinker and even greater commander knew that people should not be forced into heroism. So, he let them choose without putting a label on their decision.
Me. Yes, I am ready for my final charge as well. It may not be a frontal attack though, more a partisan strife campaign. I need to find some asymmetries in that clash. I know it is still a bit suicidal. I know I border the stupid and cringy. I also know the shortness of my forces and resources and the relative hopelessness of my position. I am not detached from reality. Still, I know that what I am doing, is the only choice. Anyway, the only choice between being true to my own feelings or escaping from them in shame again. This time, I am sure I stay here. Never been surer in my life.
“Well, funny you’re the broken one
“Stay” by Rihanna (The great) but by all means try Karliene version as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpxlFTWTRyA
But I’m the only one who needed saving
‘Cause when you never see the light
It’s hard to know which one of us is caving”