The longer I live, the more alive I feel, partly because of what is gained, but mostly because of what is lost. Every time I lose something, a new layer of the human experience is revealed to me, a new layer if myself. I've learned that nothing is tidy and I've come to think of life as a sweet and awful mess, a gorgeous, horrifying mess, in which survival means, at the very least, endurance, at most, epiphany, maybe revelation, perhaps even beauty.
I don't know whether children are born with joy, pure and unbroken, then are set to sea, and if life is a series of storms that batter each human boat until it forgets its native shore, loses all sense of direction and must set course for some entirely new destination, or if we are lost to begin with and encounter myriad opportunities to restore our commitment, to refine our internal compass, to see ourselves made and remade by events that my either capsize us or bring us, in the end, safely home.
At 35-years-old I find, to my shock and amusement, that I am fine. It's strange to accept the simple fact that a single, unalterable loss does not capsize me.
No comments:
Post a Comment