Henry Rollins keeps talking about pain, and I like it. I’ve personally tried to escape pain again and again. I’ve been the closest to myself when I acknowledged the pain- although, I’ve never been one to wrap my arms around it and enjoy it like he does:
“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.” -Henry Rollins, Get In The Van (unsure)
This pain is obvious to everyone around us- we flinch for fear that someone will pound our shoulder (Two for flinching- ha ha!). This flinching adds up over time. Soon, we hold our cards close to our chest, we watch our words and our stance gets closer and closer to Shizen-hontai— an everday combat stance. Wow! This sounds like fun! For fear of public shame, we shrink back and point at the person in the circle. I used to be the joker and the life of the party. I loved it. Over time, I got tired of people telling me to “do it again”. No thanks. At least, not for your sake. Either the group is too lazy to try (to dance, to joke, to live), or they are mocking me. As my mentor says, what other people think about you is none of your business. A little over-simplified, but it works.
So, we experience pain again and again. We see things broken around us. We see people die from strange, frustrating maladies and we barely know how to stop them. I read a great article about Lucy Gannon, an inspiring human who suffered a very rough life and died from epidermolysis bullosa (EB). The author Mic Wright mentions how he seeks to remember her by saying her name and keeping it alive, which in turn keeps her alive to an extent. I love how he explains it:
In Terry Pratchett’s books, there’s this concept of ‘the clacks.’ It was introduced in ‘Going Postal’ as a system of communication towers. John Dearheart, the son of its inventor, is murdered and a piece of code is written – GNU John Dearheart – that echoes up and down the clacks line. ‘G’ means the message is passed on, ‘N’ that it is not logged, ‘U’ that it must be turned around at the end of the line.The code leads Dearheart’s name to be repeated forever through the system. As Pratchett writes it: “A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.” The clacks carry GNU John Dearheart in the dead spaces. -Mic Wright
What do we do when we experience pain? Barely any of us know how to absorb it. I think we deal by bouncing it on- speaking the name of the person, forwarding another email a senator’s email-reading-and-tallying machine will archive or perhaps write a blog post. I think pain is like soap for most people- it continues to dilute but rarely disappears completely. I believe God is capable of absorbing pain, or changing it’s effects.
Mic Wright- the author I mentioned above- discusses god (small g) and the broken “user experience” around us in his broken UX article. I enjoyed this UX article so much, I decided to read his lucy story I mentioned above. I mean, who goes out to read stores about pain? Other than Henry Rollins?
UX is the study of the User Experience. That “beep” or “tick” sound you hear/feel when you press the cross walk button? I’m use some UX geek wrote on a whiteboard (chalkboard) long ago:
Improve user experience: Add feedback to crosswalk button. Maybe sound? Or vibration?
Great. Our “interface” has improved a bit. Now we know the system has received our request to cross the street. We feel assured we are not waiting in vain. Our time is worth something. We are safe where we are. We will be able to proceed forward in our lives. We have been heard. Awesome. Life is getting better. Our UX has improved.
Mic sets the massive amount of suffering we still experience in life (broken UX) with the ability to change the computer interface (command line). Too often for me, I’m willing to take things as they are and assume they can’t be changed. I’m tall. The sink is too low. Washing dishes hurt my back. Sigh. Absorb the pain. The DMV takes too much time. Sigh. The world is broken (hello, first-world problems!). Comparing the walking hardship it takes for millions of refugees to leave their countries and compare that pain to my 15-minute, opposite-commute drive home. It gets overwhelming real quick. (Perhaps I should walk home, too?)
So, what do we do? Mic suggests we hack it. Change it. Fight the wrongs and attempt to correct, to tweak, to hack.
I agree.
Source: When a great internet friend dies, their spirit echoes on and The entire world is broken UX, but humans are incredible hacking machines.