Last year, I wrote that there is "Something in the world that I yearn for, that I want to protect." What was this thing? I laugh and still deeply relate to this remark. But what does it mean?
Well, let’s figure it out. A word that comes to mind is "innocence." Its meaning feels integral to the meaning of the other thing. Surprisingly enough, the definition is not what I expected, although, when I come to think of it, I never learned the formal definition.
Innocence is "freedom from guilt or sin through being unacquainted with evil."
Think about it, listen, and read it to yourself again. Innocence is freedom from guilt or sin, being unacquainted with evil.
When you die, according to the Abrahamic religions, there is little chance you are innocent.
You die educated, marginally more than when you were born.
You die tarnished, worn with wrinkles, washed with the grime of life.
You die experienced: experienced with the heavy and light.
The blank page you were born with may be coated in white-out to wipe out the marks; the scribbles drawn on, erased; the ripped pieces, glued back together; unraveled from the crumpled ball it once was. But there is one thing I know—we will not die innocent.
I wanted these writings to be vessels into the depths of thought that conversation couldn’t allow for.
It wasn’t in the space these conversations couldn’t provide, but rather the difficulty of an exchange when all you need is a vessel.
It’s the time of the year, the dip in the gradient, when we ask ourselves what we’re all doing this for. You see, at some point, or every point, the current point minus a unit, where I was younger than the person I am now. A younger person that I look at and can say I’ve moved on from, or so I try and fail, and so I try and succeed.
There was a time when you would look up and pray for security. It looked like being a successful dentist—the family included. But wait, the dentist had no glory. What story is there to tell about cleaning teeth?
No, no. Wrong. There was glory, warmth, and virtue in doing classically good things. Now, there was glory. But you looked up again and realized that the beauty of curiosity was gone. It wasn’t because it couldn’t be found in the same things, but because it was never made a priority.
Head down.
You looked up again and realized that you wanted to do something. The pursuit of this being anything was worse, but you hoped and prayed that these things were good. There were times when your head was down, and there were no realizations; there were just motions, fleeting, unvirtuous actions, pursuits, and aims. You would blame it on the story of the successful dentist.
Now, you looked up again, and actions were taken to pursue this learning, goodness, and greatness. You would realize that some of these actions fell short of the aims.
The things, actions, and rules a book of virtue would instill were more than any positive consequence.
But these things take time. These things. These directions, rules, a compass.
If we ask and are blessed, there’s an essence of the future with a descriptor that I can’t trace.
It’s comfortable, wholesome, and fulfilled. It’s not all a race—craft, concept, and notion.
And maybe we’re at the societal trough. But periodicity makes a future crest a certainty. Yet, blessings, the products of prayer, aren’t a guarantee. In fact, they are far from it.
Asking. What do you sell to get it back?
Anyway, you write this: ominous enough to fake a deeper meaning, meaningful enough to scuff at, meaningful enough that you scuff at, meaningful enough that they scuff at, and vague enough to serve as a band-aid of just the right thickness.