on eating varieties of shit

an evil eye inversed? the abstraction that came out of my mind today.

it occurs to me that life is ultimately about choosing between different varieties of pain - like flavors of ice cream. at the end of the sweetness there is shit in the bottom of the cone. which flavor of shit are you willing to stomach, for which kind of sweetness?

for example. the shit you eat when you deal with office politics, for the sweetness of a steady paycheck, etc etc — is very different than the existentialist pain of being adrift with endless freedom, but no anchor, no security, no plan. which is more palettable to you?

or. in love - the sudden pain of separation, breakage, abandonment - (which feels like falling of a seaside cliff) is vastly different from the shit of bad love, which feels like sitting in a bathtub of lukeswarm water. it’s cold inside the water, cold outside. it takes a while to realize that what you really need to do is get out of the bath as quickly as possible, dry off, and go put on some clothes.

a friend gave me this very pragmatic approach to life - to weigh the types of pain, and to choose between them - rather than to be slave to pleasure, and to reject the less-than-delicious parts of the experience.

perhaps, in the end, we can let the body decide. which kind of discomfort is an acquired taste — and what is real shit - that no one should be eating? sometimes you don’t know. but hopefully my stomach will give me acid reflex next time i taste it.