How Being Waterboarded by my Kids Helped me Find a Purpose

And find peace about my creative process

It’s Tuesday evening; I’m lying in a lukewarm bath, a wet Peppa Pig towel draped over my face, while my two daughters gleefully pour water over it. I pretend to beg them to stop. Pretending is not optional; it’s the fun part of the game for them. Any reluctance from me in doing so is instantly sanctioned: my daughters have very high-pitched voices and they are expert at bouncing them off the walls of my bathroom. So, naturally, I yield.

But today is different.

Somehow, the sensation of the soaked cloth clinging to my face, with water seeping into my nose and mouth, nearly chokes me. A realisation dawns on me. Somehow, without knowing it, my kids have invented waterboarding.

After a brief moment of amusement at their perverse little brains, I start experiencing a disturbing sense of dread. I can feel that someone, somewhere, is getting waterboarded, for real. My daughters are giggling, and jumping all over me, and I’m visualizing someone’s unbearable agony.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven. —Mark Twain

In general, I like to laugh about Horror. I try to at least. It’s like a defense system, a catharsis. I know that I might hope to overcome something when I start mocking its very existence. It’s easier said than done, of course. As an extremely visual and sensory person, when I read, think or see disturbing things, I tend to experience it vividly. I think I might have hyperphantasia or something similar. Apparently up to 12% of humans have this condition of extreme visualisation. Conversely, 2% can’t visualise at all, and the rest is somewhere in between. My point is that I see very detailed versions… Disturbingly so. I imagine the smells and texture. I also have a significant, diagnosed mental health issue, which tends to complicate things.

To give a concrete example, I once attempted to read ‘Man's Search for Meaning’ by Viktor Frankl, but the first 30 pages so annihilated me that I had to drop it. For context, Viktor Frankl is a survivor of the concentration camps, and he spends quite some time in his book vividly describing his experience... It’s meant to be life-changing, and it certainly was for me. Just not in a good way. Horror became so strong that I just couldn’t stop visualizing his story. It was with me at all times. In bed before sleep, during the day, I couldn’t get my mind away. Everything started feeling pointless. My mood deteriorated; I couldn’t write anymore. What was the point of writing light-hearted stuff when things like these happened?

Well, that fateful waterboarding day led me to something similar. I started associating every rowdy game with my kids to acts of torture and agony. Like a Beckettian character, I would mechanically, invariably find sinister mental associations between our activities and Horror. Unsurprisingly, the more I pledged to not think of it, the more I did. We would be playing jump-onto-papa and I would think of beatings. They would be pulling at my arms and I would think of quartering. I was turning into a ridiculous morbid zombie, I just couldn’t shake it off.

I've always believed that there's a reason behind mental blocks. Why was I thinking about the darkest parts of human history? Me, of all people, who refuses to check the news, who refuses to get interested in politics. Was it guilt? Was my subconscious punishing me for not engaging with evil? I must admit that I’ve always carried a bit of remorse about my political apathy. My friends would often challenge me for it, and I would answer with a wall of nonchalance. But after that play-waterboarding session, I kept thinking about history, reading about it, trying to figure out what was going on. I was now reading opinion pieces, reports, and articles about current events. Getting sucked into the big tsunami of shit. Reading comments under articles, boiling over at the sheer injustice of it all. Facing up to baffling stupidity, to inhumanity and selfishness.

I found myself developing a hatred for people, and for the world itself. My play with my kids became more detached; I enjoyed it less, becoming increasingly snappier... I still couldn’t write. The more it crept into me, the more I kept looking for it, scratching the wound, wanting to reach rock bottom, in the hope that I would then be freed.

As it often happens, wisdom came to me from my wife. Like an uppercut. She got pretty mad at my dark mode and this is when it dawned on me… That dive had turned me into a worse version of myself. I had never been avoiding the news and the horrors of reality out of apathy, but rather because deep down, my soul knew it would hinder my ability to contribute meaningfully to Life. What I was able to create could be an escape, a respite, a small timeless bubble amidst the chaos, maybe. But this positive contribution, I could only offer, if Horror didn’t get to me.

There are many people who, in their anger, are still capable of changing the world. Somehow, despite Horror, because of Horror, they get an additional resource of energy, and they expend it to make things better. The war surgeons, the soldiers, the volunteers, the thinkers who go argue daily… So many people are better at changing the world than I am. But my contribution can be in helping them maintain their sanity on their journey.

We have art in order not to die of the truth. — Friedrich Nietzsche

This was honestly an eureka moment for me. I felt a peace about my creative process that had eluded me for a very long time. At long last, I found myself invested with a clear sense of purpose, paradoxically thanks to—and despite—being completely cut off from current events. Pretty counterintuitive, I suppose, but I believe that I’m far from the only one in this position.

Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them. — Leo Tolstoy

Some people say art doesn’t need an audience, but I don’t believe that's true. To me, art is not just the act of sincere creation; it becomes fully realized only when at least one person has experienced it, for better or worse. In a way, it’s like sex; it’s a moment of intimacy with someone, which has no guarantee of being any good. It can also be supreme love, or it can be absent, or it can be violating. It can also be lonely, bitter, and self-indulgent. Having a purpose, even if it involves laughing about nihilism itself, prevents it from becoming the latter.

It’s amazing how life functions sometimes. I always seem to learn profound lessons from the most mundane of things. Well… If play-waterboarding can be called that. It took me a long time to understand my purpose, but in this moment of historical madness, where horror lurks ever-present, I hope to help at least one person find their own peace.