The Bliss of "then"

Do you recall the times when we said, “we would never” in judgment of others based only on the inexperience of our youth? And we thought clinging to our beliefs would be enough to pull us through any challenge? But that was long before we had to endure the pain and heartache of the hardship? We made assumptions about what would be founded in nothing more than the innocence within us? We saw through different eyes then, didn’t we? We made unspoken promises about what we would do and a notion of the things we would never do. We looked at others in assessment of their decisions but based them on our circumstance.

And then life began to happen and our circumstances provided new experience and lo and behold, our behaviors followed our encounters faster than it chased our conviction. And there we were. Decisions were made based on new understanding with a new appreciation for knowledge based on life event.

And here we are now standing at an impasse with an internal struggle between those once unadulterated ideas and the evidence of life lessons. And the pain of the external fight between forces that no longer are concerned about being happy, only being right. The mêlée no longer about the idea that set it in motion but now about the principle of winning….and where is the winner in this, I wonder? Who wins when we move so far from what we once viewed as the glue that held us together? When we are stretched so far from one another that we cannot even hear one another cry?

I wonder if we could go back to then..when the ignorance worked?