Field Note: Alchemy, Flying with Dragons AKA Simply Making the Best of Things

There is a temptation, especially when we are hurting, to romanticize suffering. To turn hardship into proof of goodness. To wear exhaustion like a badge of honor. To tell ourselves the trials were meant to happen, because otherwise the pain feels too senseless to bear.

But I do not believe the hard things are inherently beautiful.

I do not believe we are meant to suffer endlessly in order to earn our wisdom.

I do not believe that trials are given with intent.

I do not believe martyrdom is the goal.

A lot of life is simply painful. Natural in a world of pressures, stress, and systems. Incidental. Not intentional. Some may capitalize or benefit from design, but very rarely, and mostly fictitiously, did some Machiavellian villain twirl a mustache and say, “I shall make that mortal suffer trials to make them strong.”

Some things are unfair. Some things should never have happened.

We should work to make a better world to improve our chances at better lives overall.

And yet.

There is still something extraordinary inside us.

Not because the hardship was good, but because we can still make something good from it.

That is the alchemy.

The composting of sorrow into something living.

The fermented fruit to vinegar or wine, both wonderful and useful.

We tame our dragons and fly them.

The choice to turn pain into tenderness.
To turn loneliness into compassion.
To turn confusion into clearer sight.
To turn survival into art.
To take the very things that tried to diminish us and use them to grow something softer, wiser, and more alive.

Not everyone chooses that path.

Some people become bitter.
Some become cruel.
Some stay trapped in the story of what happened to them, unable to imagine another ending.

But there is another way.

A fruitful mindset does not deny the hardship. It does not pretend the losses did not matter. It simply says:

This hurt me.
This changed me.
But I will decide what grows here.

The trials were not noble.

The suffering was not the point.

But perhaps the beauty is that we can still create something beautiful anyway.

We can use vinegar with spices to pickle vegetables and make sauces. We can dig a cellar and bottle wine that we can toast with later or cook with thereafter.

We can wander on a strange planet, find a small dragon, and teach it love and how to fly.

Then one day, we may be flying with our dragons.