Questions

Met a fan of my writing at Day 1 of 2 of the Founding Fathers of Fiction Multi-Author Event today. He told me he read the prologue and the first part of Chapter 1, in my new book which includes a church service about the story of David and Goliath, and how we too must find our stones—our faith, our hope, our courage, our unity, and our love—and use them to overcome the giants in our lives. He said he isn’t even religious nor a churchgoer—yet it still resonated with him deeply. As an author of Christian-themed urban fantasy, that meant a lot to me. 🥹 He said he’s already excited for book 3 and he hasn’t even finished book 2 yet! 😅 I suppose this means I wrote a convincing pastor as my main character. So to answer this question, yes.

"We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else. The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here nothing is fixed into place." - Zohran Mamdani

Mamdani uses America 250 to bash nation that embraced him as a child, granted him citizenship, and elected him mayor of NYC - https://thepostmillennial.com/mamdani-uses-america-250-to-bash-nation-that-embraced-him-as-a-child-granted-him-citizenship-and-elected-him-mayor-of-nyc

Not the surface description of east orthodox "joyful sorrow" of standing at the cross willingly. But detached from theology. We all have heard that pleasure and pain are two sides of the same human experience. It is my assumption that 100% everyone here took it the opposite way than mystics and poets ever intended.

Those who chase the laughter, get used to laughter, then eventually reach for pain to laugh at because jokes aren't a strong enough substrate anymore. Laughing is like catch and release fishing, find the target and then the laughter is coughing out all feelings. When offended or ashamed, an ordinary troll will find something to laugh at. Even his own pain. Just to restore the comfortable hollowness. Then there is psychosis where people can't stop laughing at what is sad.

If you strengthen your sorrow muscle, you chase that which requires empathy. You then grow your soul to accommodate all the sorrow. And soon you blur the lines between pleasure and pain. You step into the opposite territory and still use the same mourn muscle as a means of appreciating jokes. Instead of coughing everything out, you absorb and digest what's supposed to be funny.

Pain? Pleasure? Doesn't matter. Certainly fewer people get offended if you digest their jokes (don't laugh at what is funny) than if you spit on their wounds (laugh at the unfunny). And you certainly don't unconsciously project onto others your own shadow that you run away from if you embrace it with all the sorrow necessary. And as opposed to seeking a stronger stimulus just to feel alive, weaker and weaker stimuli work just as well to make you feel alive. Willingly enduring sorrow, emotionally, not physically or mentally, is a prerequisite to being able to feel joy.