This Too Shall Pass - The Modern Nepenthes

There is a broken fragility in the phrase “this too shall pass” – which has perhaps been worn thin by repetition and become a culturally acceptable way of dismissing pain. It is a comfort so often repeated that it has become a remedy for sorrow which one never truly experiences. We forget and the memories fade away behind this phrase, which gives us a soft acceptance of the things that bring about change.

Being somewhat of an escapist myself, I too have run away from the daily plethora of things that would bring me discomfort over the years. Or at least tried to. Grief, which I have ignored and not processed, has always found a way to catch up with me – in fairly awful ways. But nothing changes if nothing changes.

And if one thinks this is one of those phrases that can be used only as a remedy for sorrow, it isn’t. Once you truly start believing something it ruptures into our soul and then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy which has a tendency to bleed into our happy moments. And, all the king’s men and horses can’t put it back together. Once a phrase is a manifesto of our actions it becomes unwise for our conceited minds to imagine it otherwise. And the subtle reflections we have and all growth we achieve turn into a slow cycle of suffocation born from our inability to perceive time and process our emotions. It is a numbness so subtle we don’t even notice it. Until we do and by then the sword is too deep in our hearts to pull it out.

While the phrase holds somewhat true (in sense that we all have our ups and downs or otherwise create problems if they don’t), this constitutes a worldview where pain and suffering are the hilt of the sword which are to be ignored in our fights against reality while happiness and joy are the fleeting double-edged blade which cuts us more often than it protects the same reality. While I can feel there is comfort in this pessimism but that is a miserable existence to be had.

And, why should one think of “this too shall pass” when life hits? It feels like a bucket of cold water on a wound that needs warmth to heal. Perhaps it too is a way to justify our wretched existence to ourselves in ways otherwise cannot.

Is my suffering truly meaningless that it should just pass and not embrace me in its fading warmth of saline and echoes in the pause between the beats of my heart? And, should my happiness be truly meaningless that its fleetingness is its only value? Why should I not resist to hold on to it with everything I have?

There is a mythical drug in the Greek legends called Nepenthes which is described as "a medicine to quiet pain, care, and anger, bringing forgetfulness of every ill." It is a drug that offers silence that even the death of a child cannot summon tears. It does not bring healing but forgetfulness - but this oblivion is soon reset in the epic. Homer emphasized that endurance lies not in numbing the present but remembering it well - be it sorrow or joy.

PS:

I was supposed to write a piece on Nepenthes - a Greek legend which is a remedy for sorrow. But, as time would have it I missed my deadline as the topic wasn’t interesting enough but oh well here we are a week later with me finding it important enough to write about it.

This is not an exercise to change how people view things but more of a 2 AM verbal splurge of my misorganized thoughts spurred on by a friend’s spontaneous crisis.

Originally written for Cicatrize Collective Magazine from the prompt.

Cross-posted from my Substack