Home...

School is over for the time being and I'm home now. Sadly, the comfort and solitude that home once provided from the world covers me no longer. Being in school for so long has tainted me with knowledge from a tree that was both foreign and inviting to me. This tree of knowledge with its fruits of acquaintance, experience and higher learning has apparently open the unshutable eye of my mind consequently giving me the unwanted ability to see through the once accepted preconceptions that constituted the very foundation on which my comfort was built. I am now undone.

The idea that I was somehow eluding the damaging effects of this social, emotional and educational experience kept me stable for the most part, but I realize in coming home that the Clayton that I am now is totally different from the one who left home for college 9 months ago. Who knew that a person could die, be born again, and still develop and mature farther in 9 months then he or she has in the 18 or so years prior. As if this idea weren't difficult enough to wrap my mind around, I am faced with the fact that despite the large strides that I have made in my apparently obvious metamorphosis, I've actually lost ground. This leads me to believe that progress in certain aspects of life inevitably leads to retrogression in others.

Through all of this I've come to the conclusion that the inherent necessity for inner peace (my definition of true happiness) which drives me to better myself also necessitates the death of notions which may be commonly perceived as good in order to promote the life and growth of ideals which others (those who don't share the same convictions and mindset) may deem as trivial and unessential. Though this is an elementary concept on the surface, I’ve learned that the underlying acceptances and tolerances that are required for it to be truly put in to practice have implications that transcend the ability of even the most knowledgeable individuals to recognize and accept.