Interlude 3: Halfway
I felt a great sense of loss today.
Looking through old school magazines, looking at empty desks soon to be filled by new teachers and students, looking at young people who are losing their innocence (remember, this word means the quality of being non-poisonous) - and those who have lost all pretentions to youthful naïveté; all this makes me feel that some things are being lost.
Brian Duffy says in Tim Powers's The Drawing of the Dark, "Much has been lost, and there is yet much to lose." It is even worse to think about what may yet be lost. But that is why blogs are good things. Some day, the generation that is in high school right now will look back and be able to see their angst-filled teenage years in all their glory, and they will see what has been gained and what has been lost.
So in the end, I don't feel the impact of that loss so much. I am armoured by the thought of what is good and right about the contentiousness, the angst, the flippancy, the sheer teenagerhood of it all. And most of all, I am armoured by the fact that I have never lost sight of my own fallibility, as both man and boy (although I must admit that it is easy to accept a little dimming of the view of one's own youthful excesses).
Perhaps it is indeed time to turn from the past at least halfway, and look towards the future. Who knows whether the best is yet to be or not? We can only hope.
Looking through old school magazines, looking at empty desks soon to be filled by new teachers and students, looking at young people who are losing their innocence (remember, this word means the quality of being non-poisonous) - and those who have lost all pretentions to youthful naïveté; all this makes me feel that some things are being lost.
Brian Duffy says in Tim Powers's The Drawing of the Dark, "Much has been lost, and there is yet much to lose." It is even worse to think about what may yet be lost. But that is why blogs are good things. Some day, the generation that is in high school right now will look back and be able to see their angst-filled teenage years in all their glory, and they will see what has been gained and what has been lost.
So in the end, I don't feel the impact of that loss so much. I am armoured by the thought of what is good and right about the contentiousness, the angst, the flippancy, the sheer teenagerhood of it all. And most of all, I am armoured by the fact that I have never lost sight of my own fallibility, as both man and boy (although I must admit that it is easy to accept a little dimming of the view of one's own youthful excesses).
Perhaps it is indeed time to turn from the past at least halfway, and look towards the future. Who knows whether the best is yet to be or not? We can only hope.
etched with acid at 3:51:00 am
2 Comments:
I look at my blog posts at times and marvel at what I wrote, sometimes it seems so naive and silly. Even the recent ones... Some shock me with their hidden barbs, meant to hurt and distress.
But in the end when we feel powerless and regretful, we can only turn to the one who knows the future.
Have I ever been young? I look back and wonder. No, I cannot see so far.
No doubt, that is why I feel so weary; my heart is already ancient.
Being 'adult' is overrated, dear wanderer. My daughter reminds me of this each time she laughs at a cement mixer.
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