Heroes & Lovers

Something happens, a certain peace that falls over you, when the illusion starts to dissolve. When you begin to see the world as it truly is, not as you believed it to once be. It isn't the pain of all the losses or the burn of a breakup or the melancholy that comes with the reality that life's grandiose lies in your perception, not in the reality. When you can acknowledge that all things are not permanent, all things change and the beautiful fragile moments of wonder that we experience cannot be called back. And all the fairy tales we were raised on, the ones that promised us all happy endings, with heroes and lovers, where love wins and happiness is a place, all that fades away under the weight of living other experiences. Love, we learn, is not lasting or eternal, it comes and it goes, it dims and flickers, victim to circumstances, misunderstandings and the broad expanse of time. It's the love we have in the moments in between, the fleeting times that pass, never to be possessed, but only cherished in the moments. Heartache doesn't come from love's vulnerability, but from understanding that the deep connections are only passing moments, passing forever into memories.

Then happiness, too, begins to take on a different hue. No longer radiant, pure light we were once expected to pursue, but a fast flash that fleets ever so through our lives. Happiness lives in the unexpected, sweet glimmers, the laughs, the sunlight, the places of peace and quiet. The more we cling to it, desperate to make it stay, the more it pulls away. Reminding us all that happiness never lasts, it too, slips away.

When we become aware of this, an immense loneliness sinks in, not because we are without each other, but because the inevitable solitude of viewing life through a pair of glasses so many around you have not yet glimpsed. It's recognizing the fragile nature of human connections, the joys of nature, the gradual ending of all things. Some fools go through life blind to such thoughts. But you understand, you're just a visitor in a world that is overwhelming and never enough.

But, inside this loneliness and sadness there is a silent liberation, a freedom of viewing the world without being blind, knowing that life's beauty is not defined by it's fleeting nature, but enhanced by it. All the moments that are passing are more precious because they cannot be owned. Knowing you'll lose it all in the end gives it deeper meaning.

There is beauty in being broken, in the silence, in the surrender of being alive and present. You might not live the fairy tale you once wished, but what you do live is a raw life, fresh and unfiltered, yet no less profound. In understanding this, the pain will someday become peace, and you'll appreciate the sweet and bitter, fleeting, fragile nature of it all.