Our reason to persist

A new bomb shook Beirut last night. As always, I feel sad and desillusioned, but I seem to have lost the anger. I thought twice about posting a short tale of personal suffering when I'm just a little, insignificant drop in a sea of affliction. But it's all probably connected. And maybe it's all the same.

I passed a kidney stone yesterday. One tiny little piece of crystallized mineral salts, that felt like mount rushmore was slowly and painfully moving down my ureter. I have been quite healthy most of my life, but I'm no stranger to pain. I've had my fair share of toothaches, headaches, backaches, stomachaches, and yes, the all-dreaded heartaches. But this was no usual ache. This was it. And it was different.

It comes suddenly, finds you, digs ferociously into your gut, drenches you in sweat, tears and vomit all at the same time, and makes you wish you could carve your right flank out with your own cold hand and trembling fingers, and throw it to the dogs.

It makes you realize that, no matter how many patients you've treated and how much you know about body ailments, you never really apprehend until you find yourself sitting helplessly on the other side, the side of the ill, writhing in pain at home, at the edge of your bed, shaking like a leaf in an empty waiting room while people are too busy to lend you a moment, watching from the coldness of your stretcher the neon lights racing over your head, one light at a time, just like in the movies, as you are pushed around from your bed to the scanner and back, a journey of a few minutes that seems to take three forevers in a row.

It makes you respect the stone. And fear it.

Yet it passes. And as it lies inanimate and harmless in the palm of your hand, you stand victorious and invincible. Or so you would like to believe. Or so you probably should.

In times like these, the realization of how weak and vulnerable we are can bring an abrupt end to our willingness to fight. But it rarely does. Because the fight, although sometimes we might think differently, is not about the outcome. The eventual outcome is known and inevitable. The fight is about the fight itself. Not the least bit more.

Because that is what truly differentiates us from animals. Our survival instinct, our belligerence and anger, our neverending struggle, be it for health, power, ideology, food and water even, is not about preservation of the species or the individual. It is about not settling for acceptance. It is about not putting down weapons and giving up. It is about holding the fight till the very end.

It is about finding in the struggle for persistence itself a reason to persist.

Because we're all here for the journey. And if we weren't, all of life becomes nothing more than a big, fat, all too long and all too unpleasant joke.