Playworld

by Adam Ross

she felt alone in her marriage.

Nobody’s perfect, most especially you. Best to perfect yourself before finding fault with your partner.”

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “You know more about your feelings now than you will know ever. Swear to God. Something happens to you, say something good or bad, it doesn’t matter, and you let yourself feel it, and because it’s practically the first time, you don’t rationalize it or analyze it or overinterpret it, it’s just the thing itself. You don’t build a shell around it, it pierces you, it enters you, and, swear to God, if I could go back in time, you know what I would eliminate? What I’d lobotomize from my brain? The future. I’d let myself experience everything as it happened like you do now instead of wondering like I always did. Why isn’t this some other way instead of that? When will things be different? Better? Will they get worse? Do you understand?”

“Something bad happens to everyone,” he said. “Except it’s not bad. It’s just something. That’s the trick. Recognizing it’s just something. That’s the difference between pain and suffering. Suffering’s the former and pain’s the latter.”

How rare it is, Shel found himself thinking, to simply like someone. To know, in their company, that you would never be bored.