Ketamine 14 - Pleasant to Be Here

I turned toward my father as I would have any other day. He handed me a glass of water, and inquired of my condition. “I’m fine,” was all the answer I could muster. “You’ll be better in no time,” he said, and with that stood up and began to exit the room. When he reached the door, he added, “Nice to be alive.” There it was, “alive.” The word I had tied everything to, the word I knew he would soon utter. There was an internal flash of light, and everything flooded back. I spent the rest of the day poring over the experience. There was a great deal of fear and confusion in it, but there is a more important feature of these two emotions than their mere alleviation. No matter how detrimental an experience has been, there is always a silver lining. It is not always easily visible, however. Negative experiences can be made into positive ones by the simple action of drawing experience from them. Everything inflicted upon us changes our perspective to a given degree, and when an event shifts it at a great angle, we must secure that perspective for future reference. A fitting example is that of the recently popularized hand-held Global Positioning System. A group of my friends were discussing this technology’s application in marking exceptional fishing spots in the expansive ocean. This instrument can mark a point in the vast sea with accuracy down to a few feet, but it must have one thing to do so: another location, somewhere, to reference itself by. If we live our lives in one perspective, we will never be able to truly appreciate it. How could we appreciate sunshine if there was no rain to contrast it? How could we enjoy a cool sip of water if we were never parched? A change of venue is in order, at least once, in every life. Written January 9th, 2002 © on Jan 08 2002 03:42 PM PST   0 • 10