Do you have the appetite for endless bliss? Are you willing to face up to the idea that you were created to experience triumph?
I always wanted to be able to write without using the words "but" or "although." I want to experience doubtlessness. No hedging, no waffling. Just affirmation, acceptance, and adulation. Life is meant to be celebrated. Pain is not the common denominator. Or, maybe it is for the common.
There's this idea out there that people "peak" in life, especially in high school, or college. I kinda get it. Those times are special, and they are times where you exist in a sort of bubble that allows for ignorance of animal necessities and social restrictions. An artificial sort of equality exists, and propagates a fellow feeling which is entirely lacking in the places outside of the bubble. At least, that's what my college experience was like. Not entirely and circumspectually, but in a way that felt essence-tial. I look back on it with joy and wonder, and can barely believe I was the same person who experienced all those things.
I look back on it and know that I'll never meet someone like Lorenzo again. Lorenzo, a guy who expressed the inexpressible, and who seemed to manifest a beautiful world for himself and all those who dared come along with. I think that the world needs more Lorenzos, though perhaps by definition this cannot be. He was one of a kind, a lightning rod, a mold breaker and all the other cliches we use to describe those who can't be described. He was in many ways the man I wished I was. A kind of intellectual soul mate. Not just someone who inspires with physical and social attractiveness, but who actually makes you feel intimacy, like you are fulfilling the deepest longing of your soul.
What we longed for was something like immortality. The world would see us as rebels, or contrarians, but that's because they could never get it. They think something like Destiny is just a pretty word, or a pretty name for their daughter. It's a great name, but it's also real. Your life is of inexpressible significance, and destiny is something that must be achieved, and something that is all too often circumvented. This is not a contradiction, please understand. I had a destiny, and I turned away from it. Maybe that is why I'm writing this. An apology for what I did, and for turning my back on Lorenzo. I can't apologize to him now. But what I can do is retell the things he wanted to be told. I think he would want that, despite his claims that I would probably be wasting my time. He said I was one of the elect; we were the elect; and all others would never get it. Do you get it? Will you listen to what he had to say? I listened, and I loved it. But I didn't have faith. I thought he was being funny when he would say things like, "spring break forever."
