End of the innocence

Lately I've been feeling that I lost my sense of "naivete" about life. As I thought about it, the word didn’t seem quite right. There seemed to be too much connotation of "learning a hard lesson", of "losing a sense of humor".

Then I heard a Don Henley song and the title felt right, "The end of the innocence".

I thought about what happens when someone loses their innocence. They don’t necessarily lose their happiness. They don't necessarily feel as if they've been slighted. When they firmly grasp new knowledge they don't necessarily feel destroyed.

Well, I suppose a person could feel destroyed. I suppose they could feel betrayed. If they take it as a personal assault they could hang on to their anger and their frustration. Human beings have a lot of energy which they can choose to focus on negative thoughts and negative actions.

Somehow it seems those emotions are associated with not accepting that it's simply a change of perspective. You are seeing more than you could see before. You achieve a new outlook - one you could not have imagined before.

It occurred to me that this wasn't necessarily all bad news. It might seem sometimes like stinky news, but labeling it as "bad" is simply labeling it. (OK, I think I just changed the label from "bad" to "stinky" - at least it's a step in the right direction!)

Alex once stated that I could never love the same way again because that love had been based on the idea that people don't leave, people don't die. At the time I had felt let down. I had felt like I'd lost a crucial ability.

Now I'm beginning to understand that Alex wasn't simply conveying that I'd "lost an ability". In his words was also the lesson that I'd gained new abilities. It's quite true that I don’t view relationships the same way that I used to, but the new vantage point is not all bad, in fact it feels pretty good.

The train of thought also seems to expose a larger lesson - that no matter how far we progress there is still much more of which we are not yet aware. So many more things to learn!