Happiness like a smooth stone

February 17th, 2008

Elise:
Please refer to this letter often. You frequently need reminding as to why you should live your life the way it will, must be lived.
Understand that you are ignorant. America is a vast realm of ignorance. It isn’t real. Our borders keep out the world like it is an unpleasant secret. We live in a cocoon of meaningless business and politics. The life you have lived so far is not a real life. So far, your life means absolutely nothing. You have done no good and you will always be hollow if you do not escape.
You say and love to believe that you have a kind of internal strength beyond that of most who surround you. I now believe this to be true, but you must also fear that, if it isn’t put to use, you will let it vanish. I hope this fear will give you incentive to leave, to do hard miserable things in your life, to push you out of your ignorance, no matter how cosy and bright it is. I hope you will learn to find the meaning of pain, so become selfless like you only pretend to be.
To live with no physical comforts and no dependency on pretty things will allow you to feel the internal happiness you have always groped blindly for. Not an airy, momentary bliss, but a deep, spiritually dense happiness, a happiness like smooth stone.
Until you have the age to drive your own life, the airy bliss of your youth will suffice, but when you are finally able to search for something more permanent and more concrete, please, please go searching for it. Don’t fall back because the concept looks relieving and delicious. Go searching for your life’s meaning, even if you don’t want to, when you finally reach the brink of it. Find that meaning in other people or in the sky or somewhere else. Don’t take the easy way out. Don’t dismiss this because I am young right now. I currently have a clarity that I my not find when I reach the brink, so I am leaving this to give you a forward shove. Don’t waste it.

Elise