Indestructible

Some days I get the inklings of a feeling I have lived through all the stages in life and come back from the future ones.  Factually, this is contradictory nonsense.  I guess if a catalog were written up of U.S.'s Most Inexperience Persons, my name would be near the top.  A million people would chant, simultaneously, Older, Wiser, and You Say That Now!.  The last one is my favorite.  It oozes mystery and worldly wisdom, like some storybook spell that promises conventional plot twists in your storybook life.  And you wonder, are they right.  And you don't want them to be right (never), but you wouldn't go out of your way to prove them wrong.  You keep being you, because it's the most stable thing to do.

After all.  It could be you don't even 'say that now'.  Well, you never feel invincible, and they all reminisce about that addicting influence when they were Your Age.  I felt invincible ten years ago, ten years too soon.  I was so exceptionally invincible that even reality would not bother me.  Reality was a two-faced picture, and the good side was propped up by storybook monsters that were nice because they weren't real.  In your invincibility, you don't choose favorites.  You take whatever comes because you can take it, with a smile.

I haven't been invincible in a long time.

And the storybooks give misleading information.  When the prince kills the dreadful ogre, there's no mention of the psychological scars the battle leaves in him.  After the princess becomes a nicer person, it doesn't tell how she continues being nice.  Even the Tin Soldier is a sad, wonderful fellow, but he resigns himself to his unhappiness with little care of getting burned to a crisp.  Why doesn't he care?

For some, deep conversations are more rare than deep.  We like to live and we like to learn, and so much of this learning is shared as a common experience to multitudes that society has decided to call it Life.  And it is much discussed, and everyone has their own brand of deep conversation.  Some people's brand is more obscure than others; you look up and down and all over the immediate world, and then the internet, and then sometimes you see glimmerings of a deep conversation you understand.  For a moment, you feel relevant and wise; not invincible, but so relieved and daring you might say anything to anyone, feeling suddenly as foolish as to imagine you understand all other deep conversations, too.  Overwhelming, empowering, and likewise a great handicap, for:

As high as we have mounted in delight

In our dejection do we sink as low;

Maybe it is this new humbleness that stops all notion of invincibility from making inroads into your mind.

So I give more credence to my weaknesses than my strengths, and I call myself reserved and not an introvert, and I drink coffee with cream instead of sugar.  And I presume to understand things.  Of course.