You Bleed Just to Know You're Alive

I've been doing some writing lately (maybe even working on a book). Here is an except if you have time (and feedback). It is not the chapter in its completion, so if it leaves you hanging, it might be meant to.



Many of us are numb. We feel worn by the fact that nothing is real. Suddenly we are willing to do more than we ever thought possible just for a taste of life. I know that I am constantly frustrated by the things I am willing to do in order to feel alive. In my head I have values and ideals, principles and standards. Sometimes I live out these values with joy and enthusiasm. Most of the time, though, I am either living up to those standards in a half-asleep way, or failing to live up to those standard because something else seems better to me.
We all do things that we regret, but we never do those things because we think that we will regret them. Whether or not you are religious, you most likely think that it is wrong to do certain things, but you find that you do them anyway. We speak harsh words to people, we look at pornography on the internet, we do drugs, we steal, we hit our family members. We are all at different points on that continuum, but we all do things that go against our ideals. We later regret it, but we go into it thinking that these things will make us feel alive. And most of the time they do make us feel alive for a few moments, but then we feel even more deadened by them.
When I give in to lust (whether on the internet, TV, or in a person I am in the same room with), I end up feeling sapped of my vitality. I feel dead. But there is usually a moment in the process that makes me feel alive. And I want more because I am bored and things feel pointless, and I will give up my principles in order to feel alive. Think about it. Is there anything that you wouldn’t be willing to do if it made you feel alive? You might answer immediately that there are plenty of things that you wouldn’t do. At the same time, this drive to feel alive tends to have a way of taking over and driving what we do. Unless we convince ourselves that these things that hold out the promise of life will really produce death, then we will continue to do them, no matter where the road leads.
I was on a website this morning that interviewed a girl who had an addiction to cutting herself. One of the things she said really struck me. She said:

“It's not really about the actual physical pain. When you're suffering a depression you feel like you don't exist.
“You feel like you could vanish and no-one would notice but when you cut yourself it's about seeing the blood and knowing that you're alive and that you're still physical. You're still there.”[1]

These words were so gripping to me. It made me think of the Goo Goo Dolls song “Iris” in which the lead singer says, “When everything feels like the movies, you bleed just to know you’re alive.” To this girl in the article, and to many, many others, the price of physical scars is worth the reward of feeling like they really exist. It makes me want to cry to think of someone feeling like this is what she needs to do in order to feel alive. I want to tell them, “No, you don’t have to.” And then I realize that when I am about to enter into lust, bitterness, harsh words, and any number of other things, there are others who would shake their heads and say, “Why does he feel like he needs to do that in order to feel alive? Those things will only end up harming him.”
About a year and a half ago I bought a book called The New Man by Thomas Merton. I was at Powell’s in downtown Portland and several of the employees were high on him, so I thought I would check him out. He was a Trappist monk who lived and wrote in the middle of the twentieth century. He begins his book by talking about how life and death are at war within us. This was interesting to me as I read, but it was his second chapter that absolutely gripped me and impacted me.
The chapter was called “Promethean Theology” and related to the Greek myth of Prometheus, a titan who stole fire from the gods, and ended up being punished by them by being chained to a rock to be eternally tormented by a vulture who ate his innards. Merton relates this legend to humanity in a compelling way. He does this by taking a different slant on the Promethean legend so that it could make sense for who we are and what we desire. He says, “For the fire Prometheus steals from the gods is his own uncommunicable reality, his own spirit. It is the affirmation and vindication of his own being.”[2] The idea is that Prometheus stole fire from the gods in order to validate himself as a person. He was upset about the fact that he didn’t matter, didn’t “exist,” so he stole fire in order to force the gods to deal with him and give him an answer. Even if he ended up being punished and tormented, at least he would exist.
The irony of this retelling of the myth of Prometheus is that when Prometheus steals the fire (with the goal of forcing the gods to deal with him), there are no gods to be found on Mount Olympus, and no one really cares that he stole the fire. So, in response, he chains himself to the rock and forces the vulture to come and eat his innards. On the one hand I want to scream at Prometheus that he doesn’t have to do this, but on the other hand I can understand why he would. He is frustrated with the exact issue that this chapter is addressing. Nothing matters. Nothing is real. I don’t really feel alive. So I am going to force an answer to my existence, even if it results in my death. At least that will be better than to go on living half-asleep, or with none of my actions really mattering.
In short, Prometheus chooses to bleed just to know he’s alive.

[1] “Cutting Myself Helped Me Cope,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3630954.stm.
[2] Merton.