Collateral Beauty

3

John was a child of playful attitude and demeanor. He eloquently but excitedly chased the geese in the yard and laughed at how the wondrous birds narrowly escaped into the air. When he tired of his strenuous running through the beautiful, black and brown waves of birds, he would sit, look into the horizon, and think. He was a very thoughtful person. Not in the sense of kindness, though he was quite kind, but in the way that his mind worked like a clock, a new idea or inquiry occurred to his intelligent mind every minute. He would ask me questions, some I knew the answers to, but most were answers I was unable to offer. I always admired his thoughtfulness, for though being of a very young age, his mind crept into worlds of knowledge that only elders could fully understand. Usually he would ponder curious subjects, but his mind did wander into darkness from time to time. That is when he brought me near the most, when his mind overtook the entirety of his being, thoughts of doubt filled all the empty voids inside his skull, replacing his curiosity with fear. He found me peaceful, though I never could quite understand that. Despite his internal chaos, he always seemed to push through the fear. His dark thoughts passed away like a cloud in the wind, slowly but surely, and eventually I would leave him and go back home.

He once asked me over, and i assumed it was the same affair as the last, he needed comfort which he found only in my presence. But this time, it wasn't his own overwhelming thoughts of fear, but his father's. I wasn't surprised, I knew that this was a hereditary gene of darkness. My friend's grandfather dealt with these same mind games, now his father, and i knew it was within my friend, growing like a tumor, unable to stop or be taken out completely. I knew that it was almost the end of John's father's life, but i dare not put another dark idea in his vast mind. Those fears would come again much later in his life and on his own doing. His mind, though beautifully and intricately mapped with information built from curiosity, would be the very root of his sadness and pain. But it was not the time to let him know of that yet; especially in this sensitive time of his father's last days.