The Cat Building

I have been lost in thought for weeks. I have laid restless, piecing together this idea in my mind. My routines have become battered, as my recollection of time feels like my vision moving on the train. I have explored philosophical concepts for years but have always felt something lacking—a sense of not acknowledging reality, of continuing based on faulty premises, or a falseness of detachment.

I spoke with a woman this week, a woman whose best years are seen in her wrinkles and her crooked walk. Yet an angel, as lively as a child, shined through her eyes. Her heart spoke words we only hear with experience—experience of life. She told of her years in journalism, of the beautiful moments, of the wonderful people, but also of the convicted truths she was forced to see. Starving children. Sneakers laid upon the street, missing the foot that once filled the hole.

I have continued to struggle with this idea—that our suffering is a lesson, that looking back we will see it was needed. But is all suffering needed? Can we rationalize the deeply seeded traumatic experiences some may face within their lives? Does simplifying the experience to that logic take away from its very truth? The truth of indifference. And if it is a state of indifference without any inherent meaning attached, why must this suffering be what forges our meaning? Why must our growth and our meaning be defined by our suffering? Is that not giving power to the suffering, and taking away the voice of the suffered? Or maybe our suffering was indifferent, and we must detach—to let go of our suffering. But to that I say, you have not seen suffering. Trauma rooted deep in suffering is sometimes something that lives with us.

Why are we broken for our suffering? Why must we be healed and fixed on a timeline? Does this not make those who suffered lose their power, lose their will to continue—when the suffering inevitably stays quietly in the room?

I now realize that suffering is unconditional. Suffering is indifferent and unforgiving, but we are not our suffering. Our suffering is just suffering. There is no deeper value. In an ideology of unconditional suffering, suffering exists simply because it is suffering. Suffering is something we must come to accept—accept through action. Not a silent acceptance, but one of exploring our suffering, seeking to understand—because how can we accept that which we do not understand and continue on from there? Acceptance of suffering is highly important to find fulfillment, but it is in no form related to our meaning.

Meaning is an emergent factor. It arises under certain conditions. In unconditional suffering, there may also be conditions that hold true, that lead to emergent reactions. Love and hope are what allow meaning to come into existence. Hope: the act of continuing without logic or expectation. And love: the act of placing an action above oneself with hope.

What exactly does this mean?

Hope is an active action—that in which we continue to endure without any reason, but also without an expectation or reward. Love is allowing an action to be placed above ourselves without logic or a sense of expectation. And in this sense, an action represents something such as loving. We may love to love. We love because that very act of loving is what allows the conditions for meaning to emerge—not because that love is attached to an individual or because we are expecting something in return, but because it is a representation of ourselves and of where we find our meaning.

Just as we may write to write—not because we want to be noticed or understood—but because the very act of writing becomes where we find our meaning, regardless of outcome. Just as the starved artist paints, not with expectation, but because that is where one finds their opportunity at meaning.

Therefore, we find goals to be a meaningless pursuit. Goals as a passive act of hope with a sense of expectation. Because as we know, when we reach said goal, we may feel temporary levels of happiness but no sense of fulfillment. Chase happiness, and we may die before we have ever lived. We do not live life and find fulfillment in chasing happiness—we find it in creating the conditions for meaning to emerge, and most importantly, by accepting our suffering. So we know love and hope are what allow meaning to grow, and with that growth of meaning, and the acceptance of our suffering, we may find fulfillment.

For those deeply in pain, who have undergone deeply traumatic experiences—you are not your suffering, you are your endurance. You do not have to feel strong to be strong. You do not have to feel hopeful to hold hope. The very act of enduring, of continuing despite your suffering, shows your strength.

As a child, you learned to walk—without any reason to do so. Without any belief in self. Yet you loved and hoped. You have suffered tremendously, but have continued to endure—and that itself is a form of endurance. You have loved and lost, but that loss was not your love; it was where it was pointed. Continue to endure, and to love and hope. Do not create meaning. We cannot tell a seed to become a tree—we can only nourish and nurture the conditions that allow growth to occur.

We plant our roots in the darkness of the soil, and we accept that which was unfair, relentless, and unforgiving. That which no one should have to suffer through.

I do not ask you to create meaning in deep suffering—I ask that you accept that your suffering will not lead to your meaning. That you may continue to suffer, that you may continue to be hurt—but that suffering will not be your salvation. Your ability to endure, and to continue to choose to love and hope, is what makes your meaning. Do not feel pressure to create it, to feel strong—only to endure.

All trees are beautiful trees. If meaning has not emerged, then the conditions for said meaning were never met. And if fulfillment is never reached, then acceptance of suffering may be missing. When one passes without meaning, they were not given enough time for meaning to emerge. When many feel the urge that they cannot continue, we must not call them weak, but question why society continues to not allow the conditions for meaning to be found.

I have been working on piecing this together into something physical, something deeper, and it’s eating me alive. But the act itself is pushing me forward. I find myself writing because my thinking becomes overwhelming—that in order to keep my rational, I must pour my ideas onto a page. I feel that if my words may not speak to anyone, they speak to myself—and that is enough.

Life sometimes makes us forget the beauty of the lives we live. I often ponder by my favorite building—that which I call my cat building. I look up into the distance, and two ears stick up, and a paw rests across the rooftop, and I remember that our perception continues to shape ourselves.

-Noa Nocciola