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| Photo: Douglas Pham |
Midway this way of life we're bound upon,
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.
Ay me! how hard to speak of it—that rude
And rough and stubborn forest!
— Dante, The Divine Comedy
Recently I was pressed, several times over, to the threshold of my absolute limit for pain tolerance. It was physical, I’m happy to say, for I’ve experienced the other kinds, and I’ll take the bodily over those any day. No, I am not fishing for sympathy here, as I hope will soon be clear. The pain was a gift, a “hard consolation”, as we followers of Ignatius would say, but it was acute and prolonged, and did play with mind and emotions. The whole thing was actually quite epic, and so the story should be told from its beginning.
