Sollipsism

I think I'm slowly beginning to understand a few 'home truths.'
I can no longer blame 'them' for burning away my innocence and altruism into the remains of cynicism. The jot of hindsight I now have has taught me one thing - that there's probably a long way to go and this isn't the end - not by a long-shot. Perhaps, in order to last the course, you need to have a full vat of hope and humanity because it'll slowly evaporate anyway and anything less than a full tank would never let you go the distance. Sometimes you fill your emptying tank with what you find along the way - the quickly-souring fruits of achievement or the bitter tears of disappointment. Perhaps they chose you because they saw in your eyes an untainted longing to give yourself to the service of those who need it most. They saw your clarity of purpose and single-minded dedication. They saw - and they knew - that your youthful visage would harden into steely determination as your brows would furrow into a world-weary grimace. Even as the last shreds of your former being burns to embers of despair you look ahead - is the final product what you had hoped to be? You haven't begun to scratch the tip of the iceberg of sacrifices you'll have to make.
Amidst the clamour of others who see only risk and reward, you suddenly look back and wonder what became of who you once were - the boy who could have become; the man you could have been - the person you hoped to be. Were did space and time and hope and love and justice and fairness and curiosity and all those things that swirled within you - where did they collide within your soul? Suddenly the meaning of the 'future perfect' becomes more intense than any tense could ever conjugate itself from the jumble of mixed persons your life (and this sentence!) have become. The future perfect, the present and the worrisome future are laughing - jeering at the hopes of your past. They know now, that the past is as wildly imperfect as they are. Yet you do not laugh with them. You only nod and smile, for you have begun to learn that although you don't have the full story - neither do they. What matters is not how they stack up relative to each other. You can't measure yourself against yourself - or anyone else. What matters is that you're always writing the story - one day at a time, weaving the hopes of your past and the dreams for your future into the tangled carpet of the present.