On the Duality of Man and Funny Things

      It is at once both sad and curious that I should find aspects of reality and the imagination that are dark, depressing, and the occasionally grotesque far easier to describe than those that are cheerful, beautiful, and inspiring. What is even more haunting of a thought is that I find more enjoyment in the former than latter. To me, writing is an art, a delicate art, most subtle and incredibly subjective in nature. I find that crafting words is but another way of painting or sculpting, but I sculpt the mind and not the physical world. It seems, after saying this, all together disturbing that I could gain such satisfaction in the act of painting or sculpting something so hideous, disturbing, or heart wrenching, and that the creation of such mental images, the very construction of words to build such thoughts, flows easily from the depths of my innermost conscience, unimpeded by shock at my own mind.
     But is my mind solely at fault? Is it my mind that is to blame, or something larger entirely, influencing my art? Is our society not the reason for this blissful madness? Each morning we wake up, we turn on the news, the usual drawl, typically ignored while we go about out business in a contented haze. When we pay attention, however, to this endless, humdrum drawl, this background noise to our daily lives, it is shockingly apparent that our society is incredibly focused on the worst of the world. The news is filled with the horrors of our reality: murder, storms, death, war, rape, and destruction. Our society, though we will deny it with every ounce of conviction we contain in our bodies, craves this horror and has a sick fascination with the darkness within our world and ourselves.
     I believe we crave knowledge of our other half, but in a disturbing way, we already understand it better than any other part of our natures. I believe it is simpler for me to describe a pitch black room than one filled with sunlight and I believe chaos is easier to write of than perfection. This, primarily, is because perfection does not, will not, and cannot ever exist in this world of ours. Perfection is but a fleeting ideal dreamed up by people hungry for a better reality. Perfection may be in our future reality, but it is not in our present one, and because of this, I cannot understand it and thus have extreme difficulty when forced to explain this end of the spectrum.
     We are all two people. Which of these two is dominant depends upon influences which begin at birth. No one is perfect. We each have flaws. Whether we have a heinous scar from a house fire started when a match slipped from a hand, or a ravaging eating disorder, we all know imperfection. This understanding is at the same time utterly sad and undeniably interesting. It is also our greatest hope. Though perfection cannot be achieved, we may be able to take our understanding and turn it for the good. Someday, even, we might just beat this world of chaos, but first we have to accept what we truly are.