it's just the little things you used to see

so after finishing "a long way down", i realised that in life it's the little tragedies that hurt most. those tiny little things that hint at how life is just not so good. we're all good at fighting, and it's easy to fight the big things. when obviously bad things happen, we deal and we move on. but how do you fight off the little things?

and i suppose the oddest part is how we've all had our little tragedies. so if you took the sum total of all of these little bad things, do you come to the conclusion that the world is a horrible place? it seems like most of the bad things in life just arise from people trying to deal with other bad things, an endless cycle of bad things done out of no harmful intent at all, as if the sum total of all human actions doesn't make life better, but worse. how do you deal with that?

there was this one part in the book, where one of the characters mentioned how he read this article about a man who had jumped off the golden gate bridge only to realise that the only problem in his life that was truly unsolvable was the fact that he had just jumped off a bridge. i read that article too, but while there is something decidedly optimistic about that whole point, i can't help but wonder what happened to that man. did he solve all of his problems? or did one big problem just come along that was big enough to hide the rest, and the fact that he survived made him blind to the fact that he was still in a horrible place?

i don't really see my point now, as is often the case. but somehow i'm struck with a profound sadness for existence. the book postulates that people feel suicidal not because they don't want to live, but because they want to but it just doesn't work. i believe that to some extent, no one's life really "works". all we do is try to deal, while the little tragedies keep chipping away.