Youth is like having a plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in a pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over again. The matron doesn't want to repeat her girlhood-- she wants to repeat her honeymoon. I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.Is nostalgia a wistful longing for better, more innocent times, or is it more a longing to lose that innocence all over again? Do we have a desire to regain the innocence to be innocent again or do we have that desire for the experience-- the rush if you will-- of losing that innocence all over again?
Monday, November 05, 2007
More musings from Fitzgerald
So I finished reading This Side of Paradise and stumbled across the following passage. It really hit a nerve with me:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I can honestly say I wish I had the innocence back. The losing of it for me was not all that pleasant, and it happend gradually, one painful bit at a time. Oftentimes they were rude wake-up calls, this losing of innocence.
I can, however, remember the days when I thought all people were good and the world was perfect and everything would turn out fine.
I still believe that everything will eventually work out in the end, and for the BEST even. I just know now how hard a journey it is along the way, and that you will sacrifice and suffer in order to get there.
This is profound. It seriously is. I have never pondered this before and its a hard question for me because my innocence was taken from me as a young child so I never knew that carefree feeling most kids have. I think I was harder then than I am now. I want to go forward into being more innocent, I am much more positive and hopeful now.
Not everyone knows what it was like to have that kind of innocence to reclaim.
I may steal this to ask on my blog soon if you're ok with that.
I would never go back. My loss of innocence went hand in hand with gaining knowledge
I must have lost my innocence at an extremely early age, i can't remember that far...
Although I do love re-losing whatever innocence returns...
(formerly St.D)
I think it can be both.
If you take the general term of "innocence," I think most adults long for those times when it seemed life was one long day. No bills, no responsibilities.
That kind of innocence normally doesn't suddenly vanish (unless there's some sort of trauma involved). Childhood innocence gradually gives way to adult reality.
But the rush was fun too!
Post a Comment