Author’s Note: when first I wrote Unnecessary Risk, I could have sworn I had already written a poem by that name. I didn’t find it, so went ahead with it. But I stumbled upon the first one recently, so here it is, unedited, almost exactly seven years later after I first wrote it.
The thrill of unnecessary risk
Flows through my mind quite brisk
I can hear you now saying tsk-tsk.
Into my life I fold it with a wisk.
From the height of the stairs I leap.
But the landing angle’s too deep,
So I catch the concrete, sow then reap.
My knees are grated, but my speech needs no bleep.
I roll, my “ouch” uttered, pick up my hat.
A quick check of my knees; blood does not yet mat.
I look around and find no one around —drat!
I’ll be the last on the bus, so I fly like a bat.
© 2021 H.K. Longmore
Is Suffering Really Necessary?
Author’s note: I wrote this last week, in two cities and over hundreds of miles in the air, before Robin Williams left our sphere of existence. While that event and the subsequent news and social media flurry may color how you read this, and while some of it may even apply, to think I am making any statement about that would be incorrect.
This post showed up in my FB feed the other day stating:
Someone commented on that post saying that pain is necessary, but suffering is not. This idea is not restricted to that post or its comments. Over at society6.com, Josh Lafayette has an art print expressing this idea. And there’s a picture incorrectly attributing the idea to Buddha (the tl;dr version of the article: “Imagine someone in Asia posting ‘Jesus quotes’ (which are actually AA slogans) under a picture of Santa Claus, and you’ll get a feel for what’s [wrong with this picture]”).
The problem with reading the dictionary when you’re doing your spelling assignments in second grade is that you can’t let people misuse their native language with impunity. So let’s take a look at the root word “suffer“, as defined by the descriptive linguists at Merriam-Webster:
You won’t believe what happens next! Oh, sorry, this isn’t bait. I’ll leave that stuff on buzzfeed.
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Posted in commentary, essays
Tagged art, atonement, auto accident, co-feeling, compassion, Edvard Munch, etymology, Fake Buddha Quotes, language, linguistics, medkänsla, Milan Kundera, Mitgefühl, pain, pietà, pity, semantics, soucit, suffering, The Merchant of Venice, The Scream, word misuse, współczucie