True Smile
Can you smile for me?
I am not by your side... so looking in a mirror, or at a camera lens, thinking "this will be for her" can you do it?
I don't think you can. You can try, but a genuine smile, that smile I love that warms my heart... you can do it flawlessly under different circumstances. I know it. You just have to be happy, but...
It's not my place to tell you to be happy.
Before, I thought I knew. Before, I led my most cherished into an unknown that I thought had the potential to make them all "happy". Our beings, stricken with a certain degree of numbness to our own emotions, could learn so much if they were made to feel a higher degree of emotion. They could feel such intense joy... but I forgot... or rather in my naivety I neglected to consider... that very intense pain, suffering, and sadness that the universe would implement to balance polar opposites...
...but if it is balanced, then why does it feel that the most intense of my suffering is greeted by a collection of fragmented glimpses of happiness. Why does it feel like my afflictions arrest my heart and captivate my soul at the darkest of times, but my truest most pure feelings of joy disappear quickly with a smile.
I think it could be some personality flaw. Have you ever heard of being "afraid to be happy"? It may sound silly... how could anyone be afraid of something so positive, something that seems to be innately the goal of our human existence?
Because it must be accompanied by opposition, by balance. I fear not happiness, but what the powers of the universe may do if they deem that I have indulged in too much.
...And so my Sardonicism knows no bounds. With a twisted grin I will laugh at the happiness of the world. I will laugh because I know what suffering lies in waiting to steal away even the finest shimmering drop of pure joy.
Perhaps one day my face and my body will catch up to the aging of my mind and soul... my face will wrinkle, veins will protrude from my thinning skin on my hands and feet, my skin will loosen as if it wants to fall off the bone, and my eyes... will not change. My eyes will glimmer knowingly as they always have, and some youth may see it and think that I am a sage from the adversity of a long and experienced life... but I will cackle, because there would still be so much I do not know.
Whereas now... now I scoff at those older than me who think less of me, due to my age. They do not look into my eyes, but look upon my face. Seeing no wrinkle on my brow, seeing the traces of my youth and catching singular moments of my naivete, they think that I do not know the secrets of life. They think that I have not experienced as much as they have, for their menial few years as my senior. They do not know what my eyes have seen... nor what dark mysteries of the universe I understand.
You think, "This youth could not possibly know the suffering I have experienced. she could not know the difficulties I have gone through at my age," and you are right. I do not know your suffering, just as I do not know the suffering of any one individual. Without their perception, even that of an infant, I can not understand an other's life experiences, but it is the same for you. You do not know me, especially in that moment when you look down upon me by something as trivial as a numerical value... a value that attempts to define something as elusive and inexplicable as time.
And so... it is not my place. Not my place to tell you to be happy.
I do not know you, as you think. All I know, from what I've learned in the time that I have lived and from the vehement opposition to my happiness, is that I saw in you something I did not understand yet. As you looked into my eyes and my heart raced to see your face, I saw something I can not begin to explain... something that seems to have just as inexplicably disappeared from your face without me by your side... a true smile.
I am not by your side... so looking in a mirror, or at a camera lens, thinking "this will be for her" can you do it?
I don't think you can. You can try, but a genuine smile, that smile I love that warms my heart... you can do it flawlessly under different circumstances. I know it. You just have to be happy, but...
It's not my place to tell you to be happy.
Before, I thought I knew. Before, I led my most cherished into an unknown that I thought had the potential to make them all "happy". Our beings, stricken with a certain degree of numbness to our own emotions, could learn so much if they were made to feel a higher degree of emotion. They could feel such intense joy... but I forgot... or rather in my naivety I neglected to consider... that very intense pain, suffering, and sadness that the universe would implement to balance polar opposites...
...but if it is balanced, then why does it feel that the most intense of my suffering is greeted by a collection of fragmented glimpses of happiness. Why does it feel like my afflictions arrest my heart and captivate my soul at the darkest of times, but my truest most pure feelings of joy disappear quickly with a smile.
I think it could be some personality flaw. Have you ever heard of being "afraid to be happy"? It may sound silly... how could anyone be afraid of something so positive, something that seems to be innately the goal of our human existence?
Because it must be accompanied by opposition, by balance. I fear not happiness, but what the powers of the universe may do if they deem that I have indulged in too much.
...And so my Sardonicism knows no bounds. With a twisted grin I will laugh at the happiness of the world. I will laugh because I know what suffering lies in waiting to steal away even the finest shimmering drop of pure joy.
Perhaps one day my face and my body will catch up to the aging of my mind and soul... my face will wrinkle, veins will protrude from my thinning skin on my hands and feet, my skin will loosen as if it wants to fall off the bone, and my eyes... will not change. My eyes will glimmer knowingly as they always have, and some youth may see it and think that I am a sage from the adversity of a long and experienced life... but I will cackle, because there would still be so much I do not know.
Whereas now... now I scoff at those older than me who think less of me, due to my age. They do not look into my eyes, but look upon my face. Seeing no wrinkle on my brow, seeing the traces of my youth and catching singular moments of my naivete, they think that I do not know the secrets of life. They think that I have not experienced as much as they have, for their menial few years as my senior. They do not know what my eyes have seen... nor what dark mysteries of the universe I understand.
You think, "This youth could not possibly know the suffering I have experienced. she could not know the difficulties I have gone through at my age," and you are right. I do not know your suffering, just as I do not know the suffering of any one individual. Without their perception, even that of an infant, I can not understand an other's life experiences, but it is the same for you. You do not know me, especially in that moment when you look down upon me by something as trivial as a numerical value... a value that attempts to define something as elusive and inexplicable as time.
And so... it is not my place. Not my place to tell you to be happy.
I do not know you, as you think. All I know, from what I've learned in the time that I have lived and from the vehement opposition to my happiness, is that I saw in you something I did not understand yet. As you looked into my eyes and my heart raced to see your face, I saw something I can not begin to explain... something that seems to have just as inexplicably disappeared from your face without me by your side... a true smile.
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