I think I have come to
the conclusion that all this knowledge I have attained, all these facets of
growth and learning that I use to guard myself, that like minded pretentious
people use to guard themselves, is, as I get older, becoming more and more useless.
I think somewhere between digging into books by people I admire and forcing
myself to read those by people I despise, I have learned far too much, become
so jaded by the naivety of society and of the people that share my convictions
and beliefs, that I've given up on any semblance of hope for the world I live
in.
If that sounds sad or
selfish, I'll be the first to agree. I'd gladly give back what I know to be
that stupid, grammatically challenged ten year old from Georgia. He had faith
in people. He looked forward to things. The twenty five year old me has no
faith in people and mildly enjoys the prospect of things to come. He stews in
his sarcasm, dreads the next caffeine fueled Facebook debate. It's all a cycle,
a vicious cycle of my intellect vs your intellect. The issue isn't who's
smarter. It's that it doesn't even matter.
The wisest of men often
die the greatest of fools. I never understood that growing up, discovering
Flannery O'Conner in high school, openly rejecting Mark Twain in college. I
could not comprehend that intelligence had this epic downside, this sort of
enveloping darkness to it. You come to a point where there's not someone who's
got a last confession about the real world left. You come to a point where
adults you once assumed were brilliant become painfully stupid satires of your
youthful concept. That's where the depression of reality becomes all too real,
where you'd give anything to be ignorant, to be simple.
Your brain, my brain,
is a prison. And all we have to fight it with is love.
The truth is that love
is beyond intelligence. It seeks something of us not taught in a school or a
television special...or a book. Love gratifies the ignorant and informed alike.
None of us are immune to that possible glimmer of hope that it provides. That's
why we need it, why we should strive to embody it. Our best minds cannot
decipher love as a concept. We, ourselves, are clueless. I think I can live
with that if it means there's one thing I can't get enough of, that attacks my
darkness with light.
Love is a lot of
things, the wife sleeping next to me, the sound of "Master Of
Puppets" in shitty headphones, miles of beach, newborn babies, the taste
of blood after a good fight, broken people lifted up....and maybe the way
cracked neon looks in the darkness of the Nevada desert. Old things can
become new. Water can be turned to wine. And for all the distress my knowledge
brings me, love, in the form of a good nights sleep, will detoxify today's cold
reality so that tomorrows can be less of a drain.
Figure it out,
smartass.
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