loss and truth.

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It was the type of laugh that is sad and mocking.. you hear it from people sometimes who have lost some belief that was essential to them and feel it deeply, then replaced it with a much less palatable truth.. like when a child who loves to pretend first goes through puberty, and discovers grown ups don't pretend all that often.. a man finds out his true love does not love him back, and he acknowledges, for the first time, that he is totally alone in this life... a religious zealot faces his own death, and realizes with horror that it is completely over, that there is no after-life, and so he has been cheated out of the only life he will ever get... A seeker finds what he has been searching for, and then is overwhelmed with disappointment that the journey is over.. and even worse, that the thing he was searching for is not at all what he expected to find.. I wonder, is it better to remain deceived, but innocent? Searching, but hopeful? Or to know the truth of the thing at the expense of the inevitable disappointment it unveils.. Also, once you first recognize the truth, can you ever retreat back into innocence if you don't like what you find?
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~Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."-Walden, Thoreau.
~A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. -Oscar Wilde.

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