All good things come to an end.
I don't think I ever quite believed this. I felt goodness in things (and in people) was a circular quality, that it kept looping around, never ending. In certain cases, I thought, maybe the circle of goodness even expanded with time, became bigger like each ring of a spiral. Good things don't end, I thought, they multiply.
Naivete is the lifeblood of the uninitiated. It is a shroud we shed eventually, and when we do, we overtly despise it, but secretly wish to internalize it once again. It is irrevocable unfortunately, this gradual emergence from the veil of innocence. What's interesting is that from the other side of this divide, everything is so much clearer. It's like your vision suddenly expands. You realize that your view of the world before was hidden by a giant boulder. Before you appeared on the other side, that boulder was the center of your world, but now you can see that it was just a tiny rock in the vast landscape that surrounds you. The boulder wasn't the entirety or the boundary of your world; it was simply a very small part of the whole. What I am trying to say is, there is some truth in what we tell ourselves when we're naive. It isn't right, but it isn't completely wrong either. It may be, at best, only partially false, and at worst, only sparingly true. But it is always a combination of the two. In my naive belief that goodness in things lasts forever, at least I was partially correct - it has a finite lifespan, but in those moments of its existence, it feels infinite, as though it could stretch out and curve and loop and go on forever.
All good things come to an end. The monumental things, like a life well lived, and the seemingly insignificant things, like a wonderful meal. But I always knew this, didn't I? What's changed? What's the new discovery? The big realization of the newly enlightened? That's the question, and I can't put my finger on the answer. The closest I can come to capturing it is by describing an amalgamation of feelings - anger, disappointment, resentment, helplessness, desperation - directly juxtaposed with the naive understanding of attributing the opposite of these feelings to something not worthy of them. I don't know about you, but side by side like that, they make me momentarily feel nothing, almost empty, and then, invariably, a fierce rage, and simultaneously, a melancholic yearning for that old naivete. That's all.
Photo by Rebecca McCue
I don't think I ever quite believed this. I felt goodness in things (and in people) was a circular quality, that it kept looping around, never ending. In certain cases, I thought, maybe the circle of goodness even expanded with time, became bigger like each ring of a spiral. Good things don't end, I thought, they multiply.
Naivete is the lifeblood of the uninitiated. It is a shroud we shed eventually, and when we do, we overtly despise it, but secretly wish to internalize it once again. It is irrevocable unfortunately, this gradual emergence from the veil of innocence. What's interesting is that from the other side of this divide, everything is so much clearer. It's like your vision suddenly expands. You realize that your view of the world before was hidden by a giant boulder. Before you appeared on the other side, that boulder was the center of your world, but now you can see that it was just a tiny rock in the vast landscape that surrounds you. The boulder wasn't the entirety or the boundary of your world; it was simply a very small part of the whole. What I am trying to say is, there is some truth in what we tell ourselves when we're naive. It isn't right, but it isn't completely wrong either. It may be, at best, only partially false, and at worst, only sparingly true. But it is always a combination of the two. In my naive belief that goodness in things lasts forever, at least I was partially correct - it has a finite lifespan, but in those moments of its existence, it feels infinite, as though it could stretch out and curve and loop and go on forever. All good things come to an end. The monumental things, like a life well lived, and the seemingly insignificant things, like a wonderful meal. But I always knew this, didn't I? What's changed? What's the new discovery? The big realization of the newly enlightened? That's the question, and I can't put my finger on the answer. The closest I can come to capturing it is by describing an amalgamation of feelings - anger, disappointment, resentment, helplessness, desperation - directly juxtaposed with the naive understanding of attributing the opposite of these feelings to something not worthy of them. I don't know about you, but side by side like that, they make me momentarily feel nothing, almost empty, and then, invariably, a fierce rage, and simultaneously, a melancholic yearning for that old naivete. That's all.
Photo by Rebecca McCue