Murals (2008) by PHANTAST - Graffiti - Cultural Music & Art Association inc. - 98 Milne St. Benleigh
Pieta, Michelangelo,( age 24) 1498, St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.
Mary, Mother of God had her dead Son in her lap, yet her expression is of serene indiference, not overt sorrow.
Michelangelo makes no error here, just recongnizing that dissociation is an adaptive reaction to calamity.
Do our sufferings make us more human? Only if we can bring meaning into them. Toothache doesn't make us more human because it has no meaning beyond the obvious and banal; but there is a kind of suffering which is a more effective key, a more rewarding principle for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune. This suffering makes our souls. Not everybody regret the psychological illnesses; sometimes, in retrospect, a man can refer to his " break through" not " break down". It is this power to grow and to transform experience which is human and humanizing. This is also why, paradoxically, ilness is not the opposite of health. For humans, the true opposite to health is being stuck. ( Deitrich Bonhoeffer)