Exchanges

Finding Is Losing Something Else

Finding is losing something else.
I think about, perhaps even mourn,
what I lost to find this.

Richard Brautigan


I had lunch the other day and, as is my habit anymore without putting much thought into it, I caught small snippets of conversation from the surrounding tables. Most of the other patrons were younger. I work near a college so the cafes are full of fresh-faced earnest post-teens out to set the world (or at least their weekend date's pants) on fire. I didn't hear anything that caught my attention in particular; just the usual floating words that accompany those awkward times. Almost all of them had to do with love and desire, along with the posturing and preening that accompanies this stage in life. These puffs of heartfelt hopes and yearnings tickled my ears like whispers of songs to which I could no longer remember all the words.

I drove back to the office and as I made it into the parking lot, it struck me. I had lost my innocence. Not that it was gone altogether; I still hold onto bits and pieces of it from time to time, but I'd lost the giddiness of it. I'd lost the blind faith that it once provided me. There was a time when I would have expected this realization to be unbearable. Had someone told me when I was younger that it would come, I'd have scoffed at the cynicism of such a thought. But now...after enough years as witness and participant in some of the best and worst that a life on this planet can offer, I felt peaceful with it. The loss of innocence has not meant the loss of wonder...I am certain that I appreciate many things more deeply than before because I realize their value. More importantly, I realize their price.

I'm not sure when or how the wide-eyed young girl metamorphosed into who I am now...part mother, part warrior, part sage, part child (yes, as you grow older you remember that we are all someone's children). My heroes are different--more brave to me because of their fragility. It left me with the urge to not waste any of it...to chronicle the poignancy of something that I haven't found the words for yet. I walked back into the office feeling like a snake that had just shed its skin.