Nothing is ours. Identification with things and concepts
will kill us. Thinking that our cars or houses define who we are is almost as
shallow as thinking that we are defined by our feelings, thoughts, dreams, that
we are defined by love and pride and passion. At least those objects will
remain after we die; they’ll remain each time we die while we arrogantly search
for new traits to adorn ourselves with, while we become Dr. Frankenstein,
creating not monsters but vast amounts of nothing. After each little death that
we experience, our grasp of what is ours weakens. No one, though, can take
those deaths away from us.
Heartbreak is the noblest form of murder. When a loved one
dies, when love itself dies, when Country dies, it is not something to get
over. It is something with which you let yourself die. A writer can never
duplicate past work after a part of him is dead. That work is no longer his and
any attempt to replicate it is theft; it is the plagiarism of someone who does
not exist. Characters who once shined with life and vivid complexity are
reduced to fake-sounding names with personas based on nothing.
Creativity is not ours and we, like fools, continually give
others the power to destroy it. When she turns out to be a specter, bereft of
all that you once saw so clearly; when the Movement turns out to be lie, a
conflagration of venom and egos; when you turn out to be a sucker, duped by that
which you thought you possessed, then heartbreak will deliver its fatal blow.
Let that person die. He’ll never be who you wanted him to anyway.