Let me return to the past post today so that you may read it in the future.
Too much?
Sorry.
Anyway, I want to write about an interesting part of the X-men movie I mentioned in my previous post.
It’s when Old Charles tells Young Charles that “It is the greatest gift we have, to bear their (humanity’s) pain without breaking.”
I got to thinking about this idea. I’ve been rereading another old favorite book of mine, Rilla of Ingleside (the final Anne of Green Gables book.) Montgomery knew how to get emotion out of her readers. This book is one exhausting trip through WWI, but worth reading.
The people in this story perhaps feel the pain of the world too much. I get that the wars were terrible and people had a lot of strain, but I find it hard to believe it was quite as constant and terrorizing as this story portrays.
Not to disrespect what they suffered, I just think humanity naturally adapts and pushes away grim realities in order not to go insane.
But anyway, this book will make you feel the terrible things of war, and the grief and endurance also.
Also it draws together all the many types of people in that world. The imaginative and the dull; the clever and the simple; the devout and the reprobate; all of them are raised to a new level of importance. And the barriers between some of them are broken down.
Shared suffering can do more to make peace between individuals than any amount of good events would. Because people are stubborn, and pain tends to be the only thing that breaks us down.
How does this tie in to X-men of all things?
I mentioned before that Magneto is selfish, whereas Charles is selfless. And I also mentioned that Magneto’s selfishness lies in his ignorance of other people’s suffering.
Somewhere along the line, Charles decided to feel other people’s pain, and Erik decided to bar himself from it.
My question is, how many of us do the same thing?
It’s not hard for me to imagine how other people feel, I can put myself in their place. What is hard is wanting to, especially when it affects me personally.
We never want to be wrong after all.
Then again, some of us would rather be constantly apologizing for no clear wrongdoing than standing up for ourselves or others.
So maybe there’s no cut and dried human way of dealing with blame. But there are pretty basic ways of dealing with pain.
There is so much suffering out there now, one really couldn’t feel all of it deeply. At least, that’s what I’ve thought.
It doesn’t do to dwell on it.
Besides I know too many people who have broken under it, or if not broken, at least bent.
Bearing pain without breaking takes more strength than I have. The only way I can handle it it to lean on God.
I know there are some who might find that a cliche, easy way out sort of answer.
Or even wimpy. Like I’m not tough enough to bear pain like other people so I need to imagine someone out there who can help me.
My personal opinion is that nayone who thinks they can bear the wieght of the world without breaking is deluded.
To me it would be far worse to think that pain and sin are just things we have to live with, and there is no escaping it.
There had better be an escape. Otherwise, why are we living at all?
Isn’t that what Charles concludes? destruction isn’t the course humanity has to take, only the course it tends to take because of the cruel acts people do against each other.
And Magneto’s selfishness feeds those acts. While the selflessness of the X-men is what finally turns the tide.
That’s all for now,until next time–Natasha.
P. S. (my rule is no posting on Sunday’s but I’m making an exception because this was mostly written days ago and I kept getting interrupted before I published it, so here it is.)