“It is strange”, he said at last. “I had longed to enter the world of men. Now I see it filled with sorrow, with cruelty and treachery, with those who would destroy all around them.”
“Yet, enter it you must,” Gwydion answered, “for it is a destiny laid on each of us. True, you have seen these things. But there are equal parts of love and joy.”
Lloyd Alexander, The Black Cauldron
Some people meet the world’s darkness at the proper hour.
Others are introduced to it as children.
Long before they have words for betrayal, they learn its shape. Long before they understand cruelty, they feel its weight. While others are still wandering through the soft country of innocence, they are already learning that human beings can wound what they should protect and abandon what they should love.
The veil is lifted too early.
They see the sorrow. The treachery. The ruin.
And yet that is not the whole story.
For scattered among the wreckage are other things: a teacher who notices, a grandmother who stays, a friend who listens, a stranger who is kind for no reason at all. Small lights. Easily missed. Powerful enough to keep a soul alive.
The miracle is not that some wounded children grow into wary adults.
The miracle is that so many grow into people who love.
People who have every reason to harden and yet remain tender.
People who know exactly how much damage a human being can do and still choose gentleness.
People who inherit the fire and refuse to pass it on.
They know the world contains wolves.
But they know it contains gardens too.
They know there is cruelty enough to poison a life.
They know there is beauty enough to redeem one.
Perhaps wisdom is not discovering that darkness exists…perhaps wisdom is discovering that darkness does not get the final word
The world has always been both.
A black cauldron and a feast.
A wound and a balm.
A grave and a garden.
And every day we are asked the same question: Having seen what you have seen, what will you become?
B 🤍
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