Cheerfulness explained

A little excerpt from a very interesting essay:

Interpreting pain and loss as meaningful in a philosophical or religious context is another form of bargaining, a consolation prize: "My legs are gone, I have been tortured, my children went to a concentration camp, my tumor is inoperable, but there is a reason for everything: it is to test my faith; it is all for the greater glory of God or the Party; it brings humankind to a realization of existential despair; even from the jaws of defeat we can salvage a mustard seed of victory, we shall rise from the ashes, we shall be changed." Explanation is still the game of hope and fear: "If I submit to suffering, then maybe I will gain a higher truth."

The pressure of affliction tends to blow these answers away like chaff. A political prisoner being drowned in a bucket of floating sewage is interested in only one thing: the next breath. Sarcoidosis is not quite as severe, but the concern is the same. Beyond that, I want to open completely, without disguises, consolations, or illusions of any kind. By refusing to assign meaning to it, we stay with the emptiness of suffering, and thus begin to live in a reality that is luminous, limitless, unconditional, and immediate.

The cheerfulness that results from this renunciation of meaning cannot be destroyed, because it does not deny anything, and it does not have to be maintained. Misery and death are included, and allowed. It is not "my" cheerfulness; it does not come from anywhere. You can let go of it and laugh. You could drink from skull cups and make trumpets from human bones.

I am not sure why I like it, but I do.