And for all that, it’s not even the worst part of everything. Individual sadness eventually subsides. But the irreparable damage to the collective belief in what is possible will probably never be made whole again. It’s difficult to believe that it even exists. IT! The unnamed catalyst without which there can be no love or true faith. Need is not quite belief.
The fall of a person at every level, from an individual man to Man as we see ourselves when we are at our accomplished best, doesn’t usually happen in one calamitous plunge from the heights of glory. But rather, it is the little things we choose to do, by ourselves, when we think there’s no one watching, or when this one time doesn’t matter. It’s how the path of least resistance becomes the only way in or out, and the only way we know to go. We make small compromises, but in the most important places and the result is the slow-motion free-fall of our self-actualization. Eventually, we end up lower than where we started. We look around, incredulous, as if being sprawled out on the floor required a fall from grace to get there.