As Summer approaches, I can’t help but feel a strong sense of giddiness coming on, an involuntary rush of hopefulness and adventure. I’m positively embarrassed by it, the corniness of it, the obtuse and carefree joy that only children were supposed to possess. No, I’m not disparaging this too, I’m not; It’s just, you know, something ridiculous, something to laugh at from the receding mire of self-indulgence and logical skepticism. It makes one wonder, looking down the full length of a person—from the oblivious joy of childhood, to sullen and spiteful youth, down the pragmatic spine of adulthood, finally tracing towards the contentment and refinement of old age—which one of these seemingly compulsory stages ought we regard in earnest?
I’ve never been one to see my being as one, unified, coherent whole. Yes, I see similarities throughout myself that cannot be dissolved by changes, no matter how dramatic, in my consciousness and form. I feel these, and with vain and self-affectionate sentiment, conclude that this must be my real self; my soul, my heart (if there ever was one). Perhaps some find this comfort in every piecemeal habit, throughout every chapter of life, in every word. I do not, and have never wished to. It has always seemed clear to embrace change, to slowly become a new person, and to hope to, again and again. In fact, the opposite has always been a source of terror in me; to remain dully and solemnly the same, spinning the same webs of thoughts and dreams; living in one, flat, world.
Perhaps this is the source of my giddiness, my infinite expectation. I have, would you believe it, spent the better part of two years stuck, as it were, in the same web. Spinning, and spinning but never to metamorphosis (are the analogies wearing on your with their corniness? Yes! That is exactly what that were meant to do, what I mean to). The thing is, some days you wake up, and you feel a sudden, enormous, transcendent shift. The seasons, I think, can assist in this (again, to my intense embarrassment).
And well, take this as you will, but I must insist that this isn’t a gleeful declaration of emerging from despair into the bright and welcome glow of “happiness” (although the imagery might lead one to that). No, no, I don’t believe in happiness. This shift I’m trying to corner (and dissect), it just so happens that the last time I felt it was at the height of what I can objectively call the darkest and most painful period of my life (and yet it was not!). Alright though ,so I affirm happiness too, I do, yet I can never say so because of the false images it conjures. Of everlasting peace, and love, and nothing bad happening. I say that not only does such a thing not exist, but that a life as such would be seldom worth living. Much as a movie where nothing goes wrong, no conflict arises, is seldom worth watching. So life IS a movie you see?
And here, though this long oscillating tube that is life, I can’t help but wonder if every state, every shift, is just as valuable as the next and that before it. That in every partition, down to this very second, we know something true that we have never known, nor will never know again.
Well, there you have it folks, the meaning of life.
