Someone once told me, “You really understand pain.”

What a terrible tag line.

While I would argue that every human on this earth has a more thorough understanding of pain than they’d like, this is still true. Pain and I have been bunkmates on a fairly regular basis.

We could say that those who understand pain understand joy on a deeper level, but do we really want that to be true? Can’t joy just show up without needing a PhD in Ouch first?

Here’s a new world belief I would like to instill:

JOY HAS NO PREREQUISITES.

Doesn’t that sound nice? Can I call myself god and make it so? [Poof! It is done. You’re welcome, world.]

My real problem with pain is that sometimes I take a nice snack of pain and turn it into a multi-course meal of suffering. I need to stop doing that. Pain, fine. No one gets through life without some pain. But suffering is a more self-inflicted syndrome and I for one call bullshit on suffering.

I stopped writing for awhile, because I worried that I was getting whiny, what with all this pain and suffering and who wants to read that? But then my soul started shriveling up from lack of verbal expression and that’s not a good look on anyone.

Apparently, I would rather whine than let my soul shrivel. Or declare myself god and prescribe joy that doesn’t require an equal balance of suffering.

Or maybe I’m just thinking about this too hard, because clearly the only thing joy requires is a baby goat.

Here’s me and a baby goat in Half Moon Bay awhile back. It fell asleep in my arms. Best thing ever.