Amidst the swell of a hope that springs eternal is the innate sadness of the world, for the world. The feeling first manifested, in my feeble cognition, sometime around age four. Around the same time I became aware of myself juxtaposed against the other. The other being all those people, places, things, and concepts outside me and outside that child-parent bond, that Freudian concept of family. At four I emerged from that child-bond shell, looked about, decided things were all wrong. And what does any sane child do when faced with an innate wrongness of the world? Build a new and improved shell – thicker, stronger, better – and internally weep for years over a thing I could not articulate.
Hey, we do what we do to live and get by.
My friend Matt has said I am so internalized I am unaware of others. Or something like that, though I forget precisely. He said it quite a while back. But since I think to be unaware is to not empathize, I stopped to…well, make myself more aware. My shell having shattered years before when Robert died and further as I grew, perhaps a few shards remained before I could emerge whole, and new?
We do what we do to live and get by.
And I realized that’s what was going on. When I was four and decided in my small vocabulary “the world is wrong”. But just because it was being done doesn’t make it right, what we do to get by.
So I have plucked the slightest of shards clear and licked the wounds to a shiny glow. I have emerged from my shell, not starting over, but an absolute beginner.
