Stay Gold

Remember that wonderfully life-altering book from your early adolescence, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton? It was made into a film in the eighties, with a stellar cast. Anyway, there is a scene in the book (and movie) when Ponyboy and Johnny are in hiding in the church and are watching the sunrise, and Pony recites that Robert Frost poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay":

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

When you're 13, you immediately get it. The poem, and Pony's explanation of it, speak volumes. You are at that turning point in your life when you're just beginning the process of letting go of your innocence, and you know it, and you're so excited about it. But at the same time, you're scared, and a tiny bit sad to say good-bye to your childhood, although you'd never admit it.

I woke up this morning reciting this poem in my head. I am now more than double the age I was when I first read it. My golden innocence is no longer something I feel slipping away from me - it's been gone for a long time. So why was I thinking about it? I guess because lately I've realized that, no matter how much it pains me to know this or admit it, life is not, nor can it be, perfect. I try so hard with everything I do in life, big and small, significant and trivial, to make life absolutely picture perfect, and it hardly ever turns out that way. It's probably (or rather, obviously) because there are so many things that have happened to me, and continue to happen to me, in life that are totally out of my control, that I try as hard as possible to keep total control over everything else. I invest so much effort and energy into wanting, trying, to make everything perfect. But life isn't perfect. And even things that are perfect, can never last that way forever. Eventually, life will catch up to them and bring them back down to reality. Because, "nothing gold can stay."

This over obsessive perfectionism is something I have developed as an adult, in recent years, and while I realize that it can be destructive, there is little I can do to change it. Before, if I was a perfectionist, it was mainly something I used positively - in my academic work, for example, through college. Or in my professional work after college. But now, it's different. Now I apply it to everything, big and small, and it's mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausting.

And I guess the pain of realizing now, in my late twenties, that no matter how hard you try, life cannot be totally controlled, nor be totally perfect, is similar to the pain you feel in your adolescence. That combination of emotions when you first realize that your life is something that happens to you as much as it is something that you lead. When you're a teenager and you first realize that life can be unfair, you feel angry, bitter, depressed - you brood and overdramatize, you lock yourself in your room and listen to music and take your anger out in your journal. When you're in your late twenties and you realize once again just how unfair, and uncontrollable, life can be, all it does is make you sad.

What makes it all easier, and more bearable, is having someone you love, and who loves you unconditionally, by your side. Someone to remind you that even if life isn't perfect, and doesn't always turn out as planned, you will always be OK because you have found perfection in, with, and between each other.