"Trouble"

It's a rainy, cold Saturday.  I procrastinated my post for "trouble" and tormented myself with youtube videos.  Bawling my eyes out over singing competitions specifically.

Jonathan and Charlotte in Britain got things going.  Okay, I'm behind on these things.  They've gotten kind of famous when I wasn't looking, but having watched their videos and interviews I think I now know more about them than they know about themselves.  I'm worried about Jonathan.  He's got weight and depression problems.  What happens as life goes on and maybe Charlotte marries someone else or the stardust falls away or whatever else happens to young stars?  Sniffle.

                       

Some super sweet kids, a little boy who fell apart, gathered himself together, then gave a great performance... More sniffles.

Sung-bong Choi on the other hand... well.  Bring on the tissues.

If you think you've got troubles, walk a mile in Sung-bong's moccasins.  He was abandoned in an orphanage when he was 3, ran away when he was 5 after a beating, then lived on the streets alone for 10 years.  He was beaten, sold, and countless other miseries until a teacher got him into school for the first time as a teenager.  He came in second on Korea's Got Talent in 2011.

I know I'm not the only female who does this to herself.  I don't know about guys.  They probably close the curtains and turn off the lights before committing themselves to this kind of misery and release.  All I can say for sure is that crying about someone else's troubles makes me more able to handle my own sometimes.

Sometimes I think of the Marcia Bradys whose biggest problems are a zit on prom day.  Those people piss me off and I can get very self righteous about their petted lives -- but I don't really know what's going on with them.  Actress Maureen McCormick became drug addicted and had all sorts of family issues.  Wouldn't want to be her.

All sorts of miseries go on in the world.  125 million females suffer genital mutilation.  How many more are beaten or raped?  Males get abused too, so there's trouble enough to go around.  Sung-bung Choi has a talent to take him out of the gutter, but how many more don't have that?  It doesn't feel right to cry for him so I can feel better. But, he survived.  While there's life, there's hope.  Malala won the Nobel Prize and I feel that hope.

Sometimes I wonder if all this abuse is part of what makes the world go round?  Without real suffering, can we have art, love, achievement, empathy?

I did this painting doodle while thinking about DNA, our collective human nature and relatedness, and especially thinking that I'd like to loosen up and do something fun and free like Chris' paintings that I showed last week.  Obviously I didn't get there, but I clearly don't have anything to complain about when orphaned children live on the street.

But perhaps, opening my heart to others' suffering creates a connection that helps them somehow in the collective unconscious?  Call it prayer or anything else you'd like, but I wish for their happiness, recovery, and peace.