As It Happens

It starts with wanting to be fair. Or not wanting to be disappointed. So you lower your expectations. You take people as they come. You accept.

Soon your expectations are abandoned. You give them up and stop wanting people to be this way or that. You stop expecting even the lowest common denominator. You tell yourself you are your own and call it enlightenment. You feel enlightened.

Then, slowly, you're overtaken by a vague feeling of loss. By the time you realize it you couldn't say what it is. You wouldn't even dare admit it, because enlightenment shouldn't change its name. But there it was.

There: the hope you used to have in people--for people. Laid aside. The hope that used to feed the love between you. Laid aside. Then they've laid you aside. Discarded and they make no bones about it.

So there's at least one expectation you can keep.