Change

I read a story about New York. Then I thought about the movie Quiet City.

And, I thought that even though these two things describe, and show, the same general condition in the same place - in the same city, that is (wow, the world is changing every day) - the former is so much more recent than the latter, and I can sense that in the differing conditions they express, no matter how secondhand, or distant.

Once upon a time, I had an innate vision of the world that was one of stasis.

As with most life lessons, I was slow to realize that I was wrong. But, even in the span of the many intervening years since, I had not yet done a full 180, I think, until now.

The nature of the world is change; all stasis is an illusion.

Once upon a time, I thought the right delusions could be keys to comfort, happiness, salvation.

Nowadays, that notion itself is dissolving, and I understand that delusions of comfort are really missed opportunities to grow through deeper understanding. And now, I look back at those years and feel a terrible pain for the opportunities I sacrificed, blindly, by default, by my actions. My comfort, my satisfaction in my own bubble, offer little consolation against the loss of decades.

There is that old saying: "God is in charge of the content of life; the devil is in charge of the timing."

I think a heuristic for detecting wisdom might be: lessons we are predisposed, though not condemned, to learn the hard way.

That's life.