Wherever will we go, the day we realize that we too can fly?

Tragic - 285 Words
Aaron Dethrage

The real tragedy is not that Romeo and Juliet die. It’s not that Ophelia never learns to swim, nor the sizable funeral necessary for the Lear family, nor the slow dissolve of manipulated Macbeth. The real tragedy is the way the world looks after one of these masterfully constructed endings slips from our trembling fingers to the unforgiving table beneath it. In an instant, our entire existence becomes as hard as the creaky, varnished wood that serves as the floor beneath our feet.

Tragedy, real tragedy, reveals to us a part of ourselves that we want to strangle, bag, and bury with the roses behind our house; but we can’t–despite any degree of effort–forget these things we learned.

Tragedy serves to teach us that all of our fantasizing as children–the perfect worlds we imagine, the happy endings we expect, the beautiful family, the perfection of love, every little thing that drove our existence–was a lie. People are conniving and cruel. Things don’t work out. Misunderstands, more often than not, culminate into disaster and bitterness. We all die, alone and defeated. The entire weight of the terrifying reality of the human condition is placed in our infant hands.

I once heard of a place free from this knowledge–though, I must confess, every bleeding body and crying child on channel-after-channel of television causes me to question the possibility of such a different and beautiful escape. Regardless, the proclamation the rumor makes is that the people don’t dream, because dreaming implies a potential for failure. Instead, with closed eyes and smiles that could blind the sun, they spread their boney arms to the wind and they fly–fearlessly, majestically, and eternally.

Sunday Bloody Sunday (U2 Cover) - Lisa Bresna