Age of Innocence

I have been in a mood lately.  It is not a good mood if you were someone else looking at me from outside.  You would wonder what is wrong, because I do not act the way I normally do.  It is funny that while we cannot name what has changed, we ask what is wrong.  This is because we believe that life slowly gets worse as time goes on.  I think the we in that last sentence is crazy.  And I don’t really belong to it. 

From the inside, I relish this mood.  It is the mood of tenderness, where while I react to things with a bit more pain and the world has a slight blue hue, it is mixed with a darkness filled with stars and wonder.  They lie behind people’s eyes and they come out their mouths when they speak.  I want to hug them but they wouldn’t understand.  I know you’re wonderful.  That’s what the hug means.  It’s what my eyes say constantly if you look at them closely.  I know you’re beautiful. 

We are all lost at sea.  We are all adrift.  We can’t control everything that we wish to.  We can’t be everything we want to be because we want to be everything.  But we can be most things…and perhaps, one day, someone will be everything.  But all it takes is belief.  There is no room for fear anymore.  Believe me when I say that I know you can be great.  I’m not one to build people up beyond their abilities.  If I say it, I have seen it. 

I spend too much of my time with depressing people right now.  They aren’t sad themselves, not consciously depressed.  They’re just not good people.  They populate the world in majority, these tragic figures devoid of goals and devoid of hope.  We have sucked from them their lifeblood by telling them that there is no universality and no true greatness…that everything is relative.  So what’s the point if you cannot be the greatest?  What is the point if you cannot be a true hero any longer?  The heroes have not all gone off and died.  We can be them again.  But we must fight hard and perhaps, yes, die…or worse, fail.

I long for the innocence of youth to be within people.  There is magic in innocence.  There is magic in the light naivety of hope and youth.  That’s one of the most depressing things I deal with when I meet young women and men….mostly women.  They all act like they’re so adult.  They know so much.  They’re wisened and experienced.  They’ve been to France, they know things.  I love not knowing things.  I love learning them and being taught.  I love feeling light and sweet.  Am I the only one? 

I can’t tell you anymore how to be…I really never could.  I said beautiful things filled with vehemence and passion.  But now they must go away.  They must stay within me and my eyes and come out for my work and not for you any longer except in rarity. I will try very hard to write them once in awhile, but I cannot write them as often.  Yes, I do think of myself as a saint and savior of humanity.  I don’t care if you think that’s arrogant.  It is an aspiration I find admirable.  If you want to ask me who I am to try and tell people how to be…I’m just a boy of 23.

If you don’t want heroes and saviors.  If you want to feel like you can be no more than you are, if you want to expect so little of yourselves that no one will expect much more, go ahead.  And if you want to write me off for remaining ever hopeful for your growth, for your goodness, then you may as well.  I can’t do more than that.  But if you come to me and want to know the secrets of being great, I can tell you.  You already know them, but I can show you them again…these things, these secrets, are the constellations across your heart.  I see the stars.