Hard Lessons

Warning: If you are looking for a post that makes you laugh or updates you on what I've been up to, this isn't the post. I might do one of those in the next week or so, depending on how busy I am. This post is, in its very nature, depressing. Don't continue reading if you don't need or want that.

For the past few months I've been learning some hard lessons. Things that it seems like the rest of the world already knew, but I rejected until life hammered them into my skull.

1. There isn't any room for a cynical idealist - Though it may not show through, I actually am an idealist. I just hold different ideals than most people. Sounds like a good thing, right? It isn't. Because I'm also a cynic. Poke holes in things that don't make sense, doubt unless there is evidence reinforcing a concept. So while I hold up my ideals (loyalty, honesty, love, etc) I have no hope that they will ever be accepted into the world. It's a depressing sort of a mind set.

2. People don't really want to know the real you - They may say that they do, but they don't. At least not for me. Maybe you are so awesome that people just love you all the time. In my experience, honesty is not the best policy when it comes to making friends. People want to hear what they want to hear. The truth has very little to do with it. When people ask how you are doing, they don't want to hear you actually tell them anything about your life, they want to hear "fine" or "good" or any number of bland answers that we train into our preschoolers. To the rest of the world, it is better for you to put up a facade and pretend to be someone shallow than it is to reveal the real you. By the way, I recognize that this post violates the rule, in a way. There's a part of me, the idealistic part, that wants to continue to act as if the world was perfect and everyone actually was interested in the innermost workings of your mind even if the cynical part of me knows that it isn't true.

3. Everyone will betray you - This is an idea that I have rejected for my entire life, so I'm not surprised at all that you are probably shaking your head right now. But...my life supports it. My concept of friendship has changed dramatically over the years. In high school I spent most of my time bouncing around between different groups of friends. It was fine, I always had someone to talk to, but there was a part of me that wanted a small, close-knit group of inseparable friends. People I could always count on. People I could trust. In the course of the last year or so the idealistic part of me decided to go for it. I kept my core of friends, Tyler and Spencer, and tried to find other people that I could count on to bring in. This is why I go through and clean out my facebook friends so often (yes, "facebook"not "Facebook." Screw you, guyonthesocialnetwork). Why should I connect with people that won't have my back when the time comes? Everyone will betray you. That isn't true, right? There are people who would never do that to you. Friends flake. They prioritize others. They put their own needs far above yours. And eventually they'll leave. Even your best friends will betray you in the end. The only difference between a friend and a best friend is the amount of time it takes for them to stab you in the back. 

Well, that isn't true. Their knife also goes much, much deeper.

4. Love is when sacrifice ceases to be sacrifice - I've always wondered what love really was. Even though I don't claim to have all of the answers (but maybe most of them) I think I finally understand what love really is. For a long time, I just thought that love was sacrifice. Prioritizing someone else beyond yourself and acting on it. Doing whatever you could to make them happy, even if you were slightly less so. I was wrong. Love goes deeper than that. Love is a point far past sacrifice when the act of sacrifice no longer costs you happiness. Love is when the knowledge that what you have done has made someone else happy gives you more joy than anything else you could have done. When your life ceases to belong to you, and that's how you like it, that is love. When you have lost, and yet found, your self, that is love.

The cynical part of me says that if there is love in the world it is dying. Everyone, myself included, is worried about number one. No one is loyal anymore. Greed is everywhere. Hate is strong. The world is dark.

But the idealist in me continues to hope, continues to dream that someday love will come back and light the darkness. I just hope I can find a spark of it somewhere. Because even though it is small and even though it can quickly be extinguished, a spark can hold back the darkness. A spark can start a flame.