I Won a Thing and Took a Crazy Journey | And Butterflies

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I Won a Thing and Took a Crazy Journey | And Butterflies

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It's hard to build things. It's easier to lose them. Everyone knows this.Everyone's been taught this; everyone's experienced this. What we don't know, however, is that there is an exception. There is something so beautiful and so transcendent, it defies and defines every other thing. It defies common sense, it defies unorthodoxy, it, in short, defies and defines all senses.

That thing is faith.

It's quite easy to have faith, see, not only because most times it's thrusted upon us without our consent, but also because it is a dire neccesity. To survive, to perish, to move, to remain still, to go crazy, to retain sanity -- one must have faith.

And once you have it, though, unlike every other thing, it is damn hard to lose. But I did. I lost faith - in everything.

Forgive the melodramatic introduction. See the thing is I just won a thing. A thousand-dollars worth of "thing". Which is crazy and mind-blowing and ineffable and unbelievable and a million other adjectives. But yes, I did win a thing; a big thing, and it's changed my life.

Not, however, for the reasons I thought.

Of course when you win a thousand dollars worth of "thing" you know for a fact that your life has changed. You don't know the magnitude of this change. You don't know how true it is. Among other things you don't even know that it's real.

But this - this turned out to be very real. And it did change my life. But not how I had thought. I have a thousand dollars more "things", see, but what I got was a lot more.

The most important thing is people. I've always known this: that the most important thing is people. In case I wasn't being unequivocal enough, people are the absolutely, utterly, most important thing. And I've always known this.

Which is why it hurt so badly when people show, consciously or unconsciously, that they don't deserve this importance.

To be honest I don't like people very much. I don't do well with strangers. I don't talk much either, which I think is because I love writing so much, and Hemingway said -- rightly I think -- that writers oughtn't to talk much.

I eschew gatherings and I hate it when people don't like me -- even though I always understand how and why. It's funny because I do know people. I do. I know people. Or at any rate I know my people. I know people who are from where I'm from. I can tell what motivates them.

I did, in fact, during this brilliant just-concluded journey of mine, conjure up a rather peculiar dialogue in my mind. It is two people talking, a young man, and an older one. The younger one says to the elder:

-- But I do - I do know them.

And the elder says to the young one:

-- You claim to know them but you never speak to them. You never hear them when they speak and you never walk among them.

And the boy replies, visibly hurt and languid, that Once you know them like I do, you never want to get to know them. Or speak to them or walk among them etc.

I'm tergiversating and writing more than I should.

The crux of the matter is that I had lost faith. Faith in myself. Faith in writing. And most importantly faith in people.

I was born with faith in people. But yes I lost it -- quite a while ago. But now I have it back. Thanks to this thing I won. I got to meet people, you see. Great people, who were great not for their statute, or their size, or even their brains. People who were great for their hearts. People whom I never knew -- or rather whom I did suspect to know but was never certain of their existence. People, in short, who were real.

Take that word for whatever you want to take it for.

But yes, I did win a thing. A brilliant, unbelievable thing. And at first I thought I found hope, but what I got was faith. So for now I'll go back to my shadow -- which I love very much -- and enjoy just how vivid and more resplendent it's become.

Until later I say have a nice day and steem the fuck on!