Max Cornett- Free Response: Joy and Pain

 I spend a lot of time watching movies and TV shows. There is something so fulfilling and healing about putting your attention and focus into watching life play out in front of you with no consequences or reactions-the entirety of the plot is predetermined and nothing you do will alter the events or character’s actions in any way. Even the most absurd actions, the most pointless reactions, and the tiniest of emotions can not be affected. 

The movie itself is a locked time capsule, unchanging and permanently memorialized over and over and over again. At what point are our lives like this- predetermined to live out a certain way regardless of the ways in which we can change it? 

There are certain elements that are undeniable about life. The first, is joy. No matter what events happen in our life, I truly do believe that each individual is predetermined to experience joy and the sheer light that comes with living. It can be fleeting moments of rapturous joy, but we are all destined to experience it. The second is pain. There would be no concept of living if we did not go through pain-physical, mental, emotional. Pain is an experience of growth, of learning, of gaining knowledge. It is undeniable. These two, in a constant juxtaposition, is where I believe Divinity lies.

 True Divinity is the ability to still experience joy after pain, or being able to know that pain is inevitable even in joy, and be at peace with it. Divinity is the sense of calm and tranquility in the certainty of joy and pain. We are each predetermined to be scripted into these emotions regardless of what happens, regardless of how we run, regardless of how we long for ease. We are each a character living out a script written by joy and pain, written by Divinity herself.

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