Sometimes I wonder if we had it all wrong somehow, that as we grow older, we would indeed grow wiser, and start to see the world with a kind of clarity. I always remember how viriginia woolf described how life can at a point in time when it can be held up to the light and looked at, admired at different angles, watch light bounce off our crystallized life. As if all the past moments can become this thing which comes to a whole, which is tangible, which can be held, and would make sense.
I think, if I ever come to that point, my life would still be falling apart at the edge, trying to form a coherent whole, every moment threatening to transform and mutate itself, refusing a stable and single meaning. I am not complaining about my life, or anyone else's for the matter. Perhaps just the myth that we grow wiser, and things start to fall into place. Life gets more complex, although I guess it too gets richer at the same time.
But then today, suddenly, talking to you jing, I felt like we have gorwn up (although this wouldn not be the first time) but it is the first time, I felt that deep sense of happiness in the way you tell me about how imperfect you job may be, or life may be.
Suddenly, I realize we don't really want to go back. We always say how much we miss the past, the uncomplicated, simple everything adds up past. But then today, I sensed that we no longer moan its loss, as if we can turn around and walk back to school still with that innocence that the world has its own evils but it doesn't concern us. No, you told me you miss secondary school. Miss it--not wanting to go back. But miss it--like a celebration of something now seen as a broken off part of ourselves, we cherish.
I don't know, but I feel it too, a simple happiness, that life may not have the big philosophical purpose carved out in stone waiting for us, but then all the little things along the way, and the little mundane wisdom does add up to something, even if it does not become something crystal under a light, it still speaks of beauty.
