Unbearable

 Unbearable. What an unbearable thing is life. 

--The Bee Sting, Paul Murray

Well and so it is, at different times and in different ways, in the different phases of life, from the angst of youth, to the pain of child bearing and child rearing, to the sense of loss and the reality of dissipation in old age. The unbearable, in one guise or another, is built into life. There is no way around it. And yet we are surprised, and somehow betrayed--aghast, angry, crestfallen at the seeming cruelty of it all. How can it be, in a good world, that the brother has died before his time, that the child has suffered, that the marriage has failed, that evil has prevailed. That heartbreak has befallen us though we gave it no cause. We conclude that the world is wrong. And so it is, and has always been. We forget that we are only sojourners here, passing through, headed for another place, that proper place we are missing during this brief moment known as life on earth. As through fire, so the scripture says; as through purifying flame.