Glory Fades

We all grow up one day.  We change.  As children, we all have this fine polish.  We've been raised and nurtured and developed by parents and teachers and peers until we develop into young adults.  We are untarnished, pure.  Nothing is unforgivable, everything is fixable.  We are so unashamed and not afraid of getting hurt.

But growing up changes all of this.  Or maybe it only feels that way.  The polish fades.  We are covered in scratches and dents.  We are broken and pieces fall off.  Sometimes they are replaced, reattached with glue so they are still there, but no longer the way they used to be.  Other times they are lost or abandoned.  The silver tarnishes, the protective coating wears off and we begin to be damaged.  Sometimes it's repairable, sometimes it's not.

Life can't be undone.  And with that, sometimes we are broken in ways that can never be fixed.  No matter how much glue you use to fix the joint, no matter how many times you coat it and re-polish it, you can't get back the stability you had before.  So what is life about?  Is it about keeping yourself intact for as long as possible, staying as undamaged as you can for the longest time?  Or is it about crawling out at the end, broken and bent and utterly ruined, but with all the wisdom of your experiences?

And don't say it's about balance.  Everything is about balance.  "Take risks...but not too many."  It's what all of the advice in the world boils down to.  It's about enjoying the present, but not so much as to ruin your future.  It's sickening.  We're all so busy trying to make sure our lives don't fall apart that we don't really live them.  And maybe that's okay.  Maybe it's enough.  Maybe a mild happiness is better than an erratic patterning of highs and lows.  But then why is it that everyone seems to have these regrets about things they didn't do rather than things they did?

Maybe it's okay to be broken.  Maybe falling apart is good sometimes.  Maybe we can be happy because we're not perfect, not in spite of it.  So maybe everything will be okay, for some definition of okay, anyway.  And maybe "some definition" is better than either a rigid one or none at all.

Maybe, just maybe, if someone else believes that it is okay for us to not be okay sometimes, everything will be okay.  Eventually.  And if it's not, maybe that's okay too.