My unavoidable years of teenage angst hit me like a pile of bricks. My use of such a cliche is evidence enough of that. When I turned sixteen, I put down my pen and let the dust gather on my desk and mind alike.
As a child, one is almost immune to the poison of the real world. We are hidden inside a facade of ignorance which allows our minds to roam free of all the world's sin. We would play in the forests that they tore down, swim in the seas which they polluted, and breath the air full of ashen dust. We walked upon ground, unaware of it falling away beneath our feet. But ignorance is a child's companion, and one can only outrun reality for so long.
When I turned sixteen I saw so much pain; in my friends, my family, society. Every dream which I had held about life and love seeped through my fingers like sand, and in a moment they were gone. For every light that illuminated the city, a star died, and the night grew bright as the sky grew dim. And so I put down my pen - because if I couldn't find faith in humanity then how could I find faith in words? In the end, the answer was simple, but convincing a pessimistic sixteen year old of this fact was less so.
The world is complex. The world is challenging. Nothing will ever be laid before you in pure simplicity, because what do we have to live for if not the search for tomorrow? The world moves at a speed we cannot comprehend, and life is a train trying desperately to keep up. So everyday we run faster, jump higher, stretch out our arms further; because beauty is not to be observed, but to be sought.
So when a man at a railway station handed me his ticket to a city I couldn't pronounce, and gave me this advice, I picked up my pen and started living again.
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As a child, one is almost immune to the poison of the real world. We are hidden inside a facade of ignorance which allows our minds to roam free of all the world's sin. We would play in the forests that they tore down, swim in the seas which they polluted, and breath the air full of ashen dust. We walked upon ground, unaware of it falling away beneath our feet. But ignorance is a child's companion, and one can only outrun reality for so long.
When I turned sixteen I saw so much pain; in my friends, my family, society. Every dream which I had held about life and love seeped through my fingers like sand, and in a moment they were gone. For every light that illuminated the city, a star died, and the night grew bright as the sky grew dim. And so I put down my pen - because if I couldn't find faith in humanity then how could I find faith in words? In the end, the answer was simple, but convincing a pessimistic sixteen year old of this fact was less so.
The world is complex. The world is challenging. Nothing will ever be laid before you in pure simplicity, because what do we have to live for if not the search for tomorrow? The world moves at a speed we cannot comprehend, and life is a train trying desperately to keep up. So everyday we run faster, jump higher, stretch out our arms further; because beauty is not to be observed, but to be sought.
So when a man at a railway station handed me his ticket to a city I couldn't pronounce, and gave me this advice, I picked up my pen and started living again.
AE
