Suzaji’s Blog

I’m shivering with happiness in the early-morning cold . . . marveling at all the unexpected twists and turns of these last six weeks.No matter how hard things get, I know that—compared to the miserable sealed fate of millions—mine is an easy life with plenty of resources to reinvent myself and realize my full potential.While I was at a low ebb, too tired and too broke to go out at night, feeling trapped, and with no Internet by which to share my musings, I kept my spirits up and the writing flame alive by reading memoirs and biographies. I started out with Life, by Keith Richards—such great freeing, liberating writing! Richards and his co-writer break all the writing “rules”!Next was Victor Frankl: A Life Worth Living, by high school teacher Anna S. Redsand. This biography was written for young adults, so even though the subject matter is deadly serious, intellectually it was an easy read. I learned how Viktor Frankl stepped back from his situation and analyzed the holocaust as a psychiatrist. From my perspective, the three main psychological stages of “adjustment,” “apathy,” and “liberation and recovery” that he describes during incarceration are also at play in various degrees as we aspire to survive the entire shock of life. And, the way I see it, if you don’t find life shocking, you’re asleep at the wheel!The next memoir is one that was given to me decades ago, and for some reason I salvaged it as I was putting the bulk of my books in storage: A Quiet Violence: View from a Bangladesh Village. If I needed a cosmic reminder of how fortunate I am, this book did the job!As I write in haste, the sun is rising, shining so brightly above the mountains that I can hardly see the computer screen, here in my little cabin on the hill.

Our lives fly by in the twinkling of an eye. Surely the great challenge of self-realization, liberation, illumination—whatever you want to call it—is facing the nature of the world we live in and not sleeping deeper in the soft bed of denial . . .

This is my first real post in six weeks . . . but suddenly it’s time to go.