When I was 20 I had a car accident. I was wounded - my back was injured but more than that my psyche did a nosedive. Actually, my psyche was a mess long before the car accident but just how messed up my head was became apparent in the unrestrained emotional discharge that came out of me after I regained consciousness.
I don't remember the accident, I don't remember unleashing. (I was told it was extreme.) But I've no doubt I did vent - that was a part of my character then.
Decades later I look back on the time that is now mostly a blur - and on others since - and say it's amazing I'm alive now. What can seem so significant one day can become a part of a blur that has passed - and is past.
The reason I'm writing this now is because I know people who are struggling. They are twenty-something. Some I know by name, others I don't. The people I'm writing to are disillusioned. And suffering because of it.
Suffering itself isn't what's bad. Suffering builds strength and character when we see it through. Pain does subside and stops. What I'm beefed about it the disillusionment. Where does that come from? Where did the illusion come from in the first place - that romance and dreams will all come to pass. They don't sometimes. And that doesn't mean we shouldn't have dreamed, it just means we should be taught that it's good to dream, better to try than not to try, but that the result may seem like a failure. But why isn't someone saying 'success isn't about the dream coming true but about having the courage to try'?
To those who are disillusioned, I want to urge you: don't give up hoping that you'll have your heart's desire. Rather, hope you will, and see where life takes you to develop the heart and the desire. Desire and hope aren't in our heads, they live in our hearts. And knowing our hearts is a journey of a lifetime, not a decade or two.
And in the meantime I say grip life as an adventure! We don't know how it'll turn out (that's what makes it an adventure), but if we care about others and look up at the sky, we'll get our minds off the disappointment and see the sun peeking out.
If we look out and we look up, we'll see much more of ourselves than if we look only inside.
And if we don't look at all, we'll miss the beauty that life has to offer.
Life is beautiful. The bits that seem ugly right now make the beauty that much brighter.
