Writer's Diary
7/31/25
The worst periods of one's life, as I know from experience, are the periods of cynicism, or when one adapts cynical reason as practical reason (and rejects the gentle and attractive melancholy, but unsentimental, reasoning that is actually native to the soul).1
To turn oneself from sincere, gentle, and generous to a cynic—into a manipulative user of others—happens more easily than we might imagine; I’ve done it; everyone does it—at times. The question is for how long, to what extend; how entrenched does the cynicism get?
Cynicism happens when the world wounds us too much, when we face too much disappointment—or fear we will. It happens when we start to grow up—really grow up—and start to see what the requirements of adulthood are.
I was a better person at 21 than 27, and a better person at 36 than 21. The soul's growth is not linear, but the problem is the damage that can be done during those market bottoms of the self (when everything is striving, acquiring, getting one's own, keeping others at a distance, drinking alone—figuratively and as a matter of fact). 2
Happiness might exist in proportion to the speed at which one can pass through, if ever—a period of self-protective cynicism. The quicker one arrives at a new spiritual morning, or the quicker dawn comes, the happier a life is. The longer the protective cynicism lasts, the deeper the unhappiness becomes. It can be passed on to one’s children and beyond.
The choice in life is often between honoring strength, intelligence, and talent—or money. 3
Your neighbors, seeing that your house is made of gold, convince you to sell it off beam by beam and to rebuild it with wood—claiming that the gold house ruins the harmony of the neighborhood, is ostentatious, distracting. And then you discover later, of course, that those same neighbors have been buying up the gold at the market (at the bottom price, they've convinced you to sell it off for). 4