Life. In A Painful Nutshell.

I really don't have time to post now. Naps are being gentled tugged away from my little guys... I should be doing prep work for the cookout I'm hosting. But I just really need to write this post. And I think I'll be glad later.

In the College of Arts and Sciences, we were treated to a whole neat selection of electives like "Asian Religions" by incredible professors. My Asian Religions class had a profound effect on me.. especially the section on Buddhism. Imagine, life being All Pain? Really? Like.. ALL life is suffering. Just have to get through the suffering; without it there would be no joy.

When I was gazing at my adorable cherubic infant who is currently experiencing sharp little razor blades coming through his bottom gum, I thought.. this is fitting. Isn't it?

Here is this little guy, just barely here. Barely six months old. He looks around, he sees a brand new world. Everything is great. Everything is fantastic! Everyone is so nice. Everyone is so accommodating. Everything I need, I am given!! Such joy, in this place called The World.

And then.. the pain.

It starts, probably, as a faint little ache in the gums. (Right? How the hell would we know?) Then it probably moves up to the jaw a little, a constant, dull aching.

Cutting teeth. Ouch! How painful is that? Imagine for a minute how that must feel. Didja ever get your wisdom teeth out? Yeah.

You just barely arrive here, happy as a baby, and then the pain begins. (And then, later, it really begins, when someone steals your toy and won't give it back, or you fall off the playground, or nobody wants to be your friend, or you get your heart broken. Or you forget you left the emergency break on when you start to go and smell an awful burning rubber smell.)

But look. We get through the pain. The constant-ness of it. Never ending, never a break until that tooth pokes through and one kid goes off to school (or college.)

The pain... then the joy... we like all of it.