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The Illumination of Distress Until today I believed that distress rendered a man impotent, perfidious to his cause, forlorn and humiliated; but this one occasion has changed my outlook. ... Now do I realise that distress is turned into a venomous sting only when it has sprung from the soil of passion—and that sting unsettles the mind forthwith. But if distress has grown out of some noble urge for a hallowed creation, one finds delight of a peculiar quality in its proximity, even though it be like a blazing fire. If fire gives warmth in cold, while purifying gold no less, the flames of distress, too, impart warmth to man's mind, purging it like gold, besides. Such distress undoes false illusion, elects the true friend for us from amongst a whole circle surrounding us, reveals the benign and enlightened form of the Spirit and turns to an airy nothing the bewitching image of spurious hopes as a bygone nonentity. If the splendour of the sun divulges the pure image of the universe, the irradiation of distress unveils the reality of life dynamic!
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