A couple of weeks ago, someone left me this message:

"Visit your website everyday and get inspired by your crystal love towards mundane life. I will begin a brand-new life and make attempt to activate my enthusiasm towards the reality… Curious about why you are able to love this world while suffering from it"

I wanted to respond to it here in full, because I wanted my response to have a permanent home on my site.

I wish I had a real answer to this. I’ve felt bad almost every day without respite for a month or so now, maybe a bit more. It’s hard to keep track of the increasingly monotonous days. Despite this, I still think I love this world. There’s this song that I’ve been listening to, it goes:

I have a love
I have a love for this world
A kind of love that will break my heart
A kind of love that reconstructs and remodels the past
That adds a dryness to the dry August grass
That adds the sunshine to the magnifying glass
And makes me fight for something that just can't last

The song is actually about the singer holding his lover in his arms, a love song. I don't have that sort of love. I don't feel like I have anything, for that matter. The only thing I think I have left is a love for this world. I wouldn't know who I am without it. Sometimes I think I love this world because it is all that I know how to do. I have no alternative.

I even love suffering, I really do. I feel depressed, but the worst of it is a feeling of apathy & of numbness, of pointlessness. I don't mind suffering if I think there is a point to it. In fact, I welcome suffering. The trouble is that the mundane has started to become trivial in my eyes, & I'm unable to embrace suffering the way that I used to.

A few days ago, on a camping trip while sick with a sore throat, we'd found that we had forgotten the roof of our tent, so the only thing between us & the night air was some netting. The night was cold, & my sleeping bag wasn't warm enough. Maybe I had developed a fever in the night, because I've slept through much lower temperatures before. That night, I felt horribly cold, to the point of pain. Being awake hurt my body. Every part of me hurt. I was so cold that my feet felt wet in their socks. I curled up like a small animal & I wished the night away. I spent much of the night somewhere between being asleep & being awake, & I cannot tell you whether or not I was really conscious that night. Despite this, it was the best that I've felt in a week or so, just laying there in pain, suffering. It made me feel alive, and for that, I love my suffering.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, being alive & suffering are the same thing. This world & suffering are the same thing. The only way that they will ever divorce each other is when you are too numb to recognize it. To ask me why I love this world while suffering from it is to ask me why I love being alive: I have to. It's the only way that I can endure the weight of any of this. I tell myself that my suffering has purpose because it means that I'm alive, then I tell myself my life doesn't have a purpose, but that it doesn't need one.

So to answer your question, I think I love this world out of necessity, because without this love, I have nothing left. It's not an accidental love. It's one that I have to cultivate, that I try to tend to day after day, because the only alternative for me is death.

The only thing that I can do is to love this world, to love its suffering, and to do it on purpose. That's all the purpose I have & all the purpose I need. With this, I can hold up a torch to all of the meaninglessness.