Blood and Wine

Blood and wine.

The past week has been hell. I was busy every single day of the week; even the two half days that miraculously appeared to try slow the rate I was descending into insanity were perverted to become opportunities to kill me with more work. The Monday half day turned into an all-afternoon Street Festival hiphop practice session while the Friday one, which I thought would finally be a much deserved rest before College Day the next day, was quickly attacked by Pre-U Seminar script presentation readings.

The days in between weren't much better. There was ballet practice on Tuesday and then College Day rehearsals on Wednesday and Thursday. The whole week was spent in preparation for today, Saturday. The Pre-U Seminar presentation technical run woke me up at six this morning followed four hours later by College Day celebrations and our ballet performance for the concert all the way into the night. I only got back to the hostel at 11.30 tonight.

Hell Day, really. And not the last, I'm sure.

It's only as I sit here doodling over my laptop close to the brink of midnight instead of going to sleep that I realize just how little rest I've had. There wasn't a single day this whole week when I could just go to school to pretend to be awake while waiting to go back to my room to sleep and then actually go back to my room to sleep. Even with the physical exhaustion of dancing, I haven't rested to recover any strength.

But now this week is over. I can really rest and recover after all that running around trying to save the world without rest like Jack Bauer on 24. This is going to be a great weekend: two days of no dance, no Pre-U Seminar. I'm already thinking of how to spend those 48 hours of bliss. Sleeping in, shopping, writing, lavish dining out instead of the free but utterly inedible hostel food, shopping for things I don't need, iced mocha lattes... So many choices, so little time. Never mind. Even doodling over my laptop for two days sounds great.

It'll be what I need before next week starts, which actually promises to be worse than this week. The Pre-U Seminar presentation dry run is on next Saturday and the script must be finalized with all the content and stylistic adjustments in by then. That means lots of readings and meetings. And if that's not enough, Street Festival is in two weeks, so hiphop will inevitably clash with Pre-U Seminar sessions. I can't afford to miss either. But I must. Which one to miss is a choice I'll make when I get there.

I wrote before that this coming month would be a true test of my passion. It is a test of willpower and endurance, of going on despite all the weight that keeps adding on to your shoulders and dragging you down, slowly driving you physically and mentally to the point of collapse and insanity. And no matter how much I love what I'm doing, there are so many moments when that mortal strength threatens to fail.

I don't have faith or God to hold on to when I fall; I'm agnostic. I only have myself, who has and always will be my saviour and my reason for being from the day I was born to the day I die. So I pick myself up, time and time again, and push on against the storm.

Because I know what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. I embrace the suffering, the burdens I could easily cast aside at any moment, the unravelling of my body and the madness slowly eating into my mind. It's a secret, perverse love affair with stress and pain that few can understand. I don't understand it myself sometimes. I only know I am being me.

But I do know that suffering is something we need. We cannot live without suffering, for if we did, we would be in heaven, dead, and not need to live.

We need suffering because without it, life's pleasures would mean nothing to us. I've always believed that the more deeply we have suffered, the more deep our appreciation of life's joys will be. Life is beautiful, if you would open your eyes and find those moments of heaven hidden in a lifetime of hell. Serious suffering opens those eyes, makes them want to find something to live for.

I find my beliefs reaffirmed every time I hear pointless complaints and whining. When we have been so protected and shielded from true pain and suffering, of course we won't truly know how much worse life can get. We think this is all life is. We can easily feel the greater pleasures and joys of life but the small ones evade us because we cannot sufficiently appreciate them. That is why many will fail to love the small things in life that seem so trivial and pointless to them but so beautiful and brilliant to me. They just haven't suffered enough.

But when true suffering comes, you can see the truth of a person's maturity: under all that bravado is a little child who screams and cries when the jar of serpents is unleashed upon them. These children can't cope with the pain. They writhe and finally wilt, killed by a darkness they were never prepared to handle.

Not all of them die though. Some survive, with parts of them dead and eaten away. They survive and grow new, stronger limbs to replace those lost and keep on living.

Every person has died countless times already. But the growth from their rebirths varies greatly. The most mature have suffered greatly and learned greatly from their suffering. Others fall short in either the suffering or the learning and fail to prepare for worse to come. They age physically, but little mentally. Happy lives retard.

But of course that's not to say we should deny ourselves of joy and instead turn our lives into hell. That is truly a road to insanity if there ever was one. If there were no joy in life, nothing to live for and hold onto, then we'd have wisely chosen not to live a long time ago. All of life's suffering is worth enduring if just for the fleeting glimpses of happiness we have been blessed with.

We need happiness as much as we need suffering. Without knowing pain, we can never truly know pleasure, but without knowing pleasure, the knowledge of pain would be too much to bear.

So I embrace the pain. I embrace it because then I am truly glad for so many things life has given me. Even through all of this week's hellish struggles, I've been blessed with so many moments of heavenly respite. The joy of talking and laughing about meaningless things with friends. The happiness for your friends' happiness. The pure power of a dead silent, attentive lecture theater during your presentation. The rush of dancing onstage even with those damned tights. The proud humiliation of realizing exactly how many people you know saw you dancing in those damned tights. There are so many of these moments I can't name, can't even remember except that they made me glad to be alive.

These are the moments in life that I value and place far higher than rest or money. Those are material pleasures I am willing to sacrifice for the chance to grab hold of something more.

Because in the end, it's not going to be about your career or your studies that count. It'll be about whether all the horrors of pain and suffering were worth it. It'll be about whether your life, already escaping from your body with each breath, was worth living. It'll be about happiness.

And happiness can only fully be appreciated when mixed with pain and suffering. Life is a mix of blood and wine. Don't hesitate to seize the cup of life and drink deep. It doesn't matter how bitter it is. It doesn't matter how faint the sweetness is.

The drink is richer for it after all.
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