I'm not going to negate you here, because you have a lifetime of lived experience and I don't doubt your pain is and has been real. Yet people suffer in many wa

I'm not going to negate you here, because you have a lifetime of lived experience and I don't doubt your pain is and has been real. Yet people suffer in many ways and there are some deeply twisted realities that many people have lived. In our darkest moments we all feel we are the tortured one, but that is not the whole truth either. It is tempting to believe that we are at war with an implacable, all-powerful enemy. But truthfully, we are only at war with our own minds. The mind is ultimately a digging machine. It matters a lot where you point it, more even the lens through which you interpret all that you see. Some very disadvantaged people have put forth some incredible feats of overcoming. They refused to be defined by their disabilities, their pain, their hardship--and refused to rue their existence. This engine grinds us all, but this world is no hell. And that damn octopus, maybe he reaches the height of ecstasy in that moment, an orgasm beyond belief. Wicked is a judgment.