Fractal Realities: Suffering Builds Character

It's difficult to grow up. Shoot, it's difficult to even figure out what that means. I suspect that the act of growing up is rooted in pain. Pain that is unfair, unique to you, callous, and solely your responsibility. From the white-hot shard of ice whose dark light blots out vision and destroys thought, to the nauseatingly sour density of the black hole just below your belly button, to the sense of loss that never stops growing into an infinite void that makes the vast sky small. Screams, whimpers, and tears. Yes, everyone experiences pain but even with a well developed since of empathy we can't truly know someone else's pain, and even if we could it would be through the lens of our own experience. Each person's threshold is based only on the amount of pain they've been subjected to. Maybe growing up is experiencing different kinds of pain: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. Pain surrounds the burning open wound that is death. I try not to think about it. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't.