20/20 Vision... 20 Years?

A 20 year reunion. It's been 20 long years since high school. I don't feel a bit different now than I did then... but am I? After a few conversations, I know that I am different. Who can really say if a person changes over time? Who is the best judge? After all, I look in the mirror each day and see me... the changes are slow and subtle. I hardly notice them. Someone who hasn't seen me in 20 years, things tend to look a bit different to them.

The Chinese used to have a form of execution known as "Death by a thousand cuts."

The idea is pretty barbaric and basic; it's nothing short of torture and has been long since outlawed, although it continued for years after. The idea itself carries meaning, both for the convicted and the executioner.

First, we should examine the convicted. Perhaps in certain occasions, ones in which a human being has committed the most vile of crimes, a person could condone torture. More often that not, the process was probably inordinately cruel and even after being outlawed was rumored to have been applied to Christian missionaries at the turn of the last century.

I look back on my life and fully recognize that I lack 20/20 vision of my high school experience. After all, it's been 20 years. But time has a way of reckoning the past, and my personal development has stemmed from a thousand cuts... each one a little deeper, even gashes that carved out whole new places in which my soul has learned to settle into the vacuum of each removed piece.

Some of the slashes are mere wrinkles, a receding hairline on its way out for a pass from a quarterback that never throws the ball, or even shades of gray appearing in locks of hair from the front to the back like the surface of lake at the end of a cloudy sunset. Others are deeper cuts and they seldom show themselves apart from a detailed conversation about the journey life takes each of us through.

The victim is itself the loss of innocence, though we seldom call it such. It is that idealistic belief that true love never dies, that justice and goodness win the battles against our prejudices, our fears, and apathy. It doesn't seem like these notions of truth and beauty are capable of reduction beneath time's scalpel, but they are as vulnerable as the face and hair color. Our most noble ideas need not whither with time, but the death is slow and for many of us, it is often deliberate and hidden.

The second big idea around the death by a thousand cuts involves the role of the executioner. It is doubtless true that old saying, "You will always be your own worse enemy." The loss of innocence is a garden expulsion, to use biblical references. An expulsion involves a violation of the order of things. As life's rich and often painful experiences attack our psyches they offer to us choices. We can close up, we can open up and more often than not, we do both simultaneously.

As one door begins to shut and one slice penetrates the will, we are forced in turn to open another door. Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, there can be no new tree. So 20 years later, surrounded by my dearest friends, I am offered a light into the places I let close down... the victims I subjected to the death by a thousand cuts. Yet the loss of idealism and innocence is in fact the path to realism. We emerge stronger and better equipped to parent and to protect, to love with eyes wide open, and to stand above the grayish haze of life's finer ideas and evaluate their fitness for our human experiences. The door to truth opens wider-- no longer a naive Maxim which must be followed, instead truth becomes an intricate structure of being, which when lived and applied brings out a richer fruit.

The innocence beneath the executioner's blade then moves from a victim who is succumbing to torture to a patient who is undergoing surgery. I've learned to excise some of the parts of me which didn't function in a real world setting, and after a thousand cuts, I trust that these places have emerged from youth with something much different to offer my own waywardness and gullibility.

The strangest thing about looking back is the sinking feeling that comes from wondering if the surgery was really worth it. I think it probably was... but after an hour long chat with faces I've not seen in 20-years, the ghosts of childhood innocence begin their haunting and each clean cut begins to bleed again. On night's like this, I break out the scales and begin to evaluate which way the changes lean, not just for myself, but for my friends as well-- the ones present, and the ones absent.

I'm certain it is different for each of us. Our conversations and stories can only take us closer to seeing the fullness of our lives with 20/20 vision. I regret not having more time, more talks, and even more ghosts brought out to examine with a shimmering blade.