At any given point, the world, ourselves, the forces we have yet to comprehend are trying to teach us something. 

It’s moves closer to our awareness, like a figure emerging through thick mud, until it’s on top of us, squeezing our lungs dry, wailing into our cringing faces. 

I wish I could learn lessons before they start hurting so much. 

I wish I could change before I am forced to. 

I wish I could want more without noticing I have less. 

But that’s what it means to be human. It means suffering, because suffering is required for growth. It means most opportunities, guilt, regret and punishment, so you can discern what is right from what is good. It means living clumsily, clunking through life like a rusted tankard, harboring all the grime the world forces through our pores. 

The only escape is acceptance. I know this, we all know this, but we know how to do only two things, fight or flight, and acceptance is the opposite of them both. 

That means, I think, that a peaceful life, a good life, a life everyone else seems to be living (though nobody actually is) is against our nature. An exquisite life forces us to rage against our own nature, which is something very few of us ever really learn to do. 

And so, I ask, is exquisite living (and that is what I’m striving for) perpetually lonely? 

It seems that way. 

But then again—nothing is really ever as it seems.