Yes, troubling. And even worse, there are people far harder to process than Chris. Contemplating it all is excruciating, enough to make some people take their own lives in the despair of it. I've never met a person who isn't deeply troubled by the presence of suffering, and the existence of those who perpetrate it.

And yet... here we are. Contemplating suffering.

How can it make any sense at all?

Now, what shall a person do with that question? Take it rhetorically? It's easy to imagine there isn't any sense to it, that we are just bags of protons with emergent consciousness, or that God exists and is arbitrary as fuck. Both answers are pretty unsatisfying. Might as well lean into the question and spend what little time there is to figure it out, as we both seem to be doing.

The most obvious hypothesis to play with is the one we are born with, one that gets carefully beaten out of us by the adults in the room and the differnent religions we are exposed to. Every child is born with the sense of being the center of the Universe. They know they are god. It is obvious to them. This is usually forgotten by the time they are adolescents.

So, start with that hypothesis and ask yourself with all sincerity: What if I was god? What if I created all of this? Why might I have done this to myself? What is the purpose in all of these characters I have created? If I am all these things, am I the devil too? If I am the judge and the one judged, can there be any right or wrong? Can there be such constructs as Heaven and Hell?

This is a slow, slow meditation, but it is where the fruit is. These words are about as plain as I can make it, and yet they are totally inadequate to the experience of realization that you are the entirety of all the universe. You are every person you love, every person you hate, and everything in between. There is no one to control but yourself. No one to preach to but yourself. No one to hurt but yourself. No one to love but yourself. The world you see is a projection of the world inside you, inside the mind of god. If you desire to make the world brighter, start in your mind.

You constructed the Universe and left yourself a million, million clues to figure it out. You obviously enjoy the challenge because ... Chris Chan. WTF? I can't explain Chris Chan to you, but you can, to yourself, when the time is perfect and you will feel so relieved about it that you will laugh. It seems impossible now, I know, but it isn't.