A Sad Thing

I thought a sad thing today. A very sad thing. A thing so sad that, if I were not myself, but someone else, a stranger to myself, and I, as a stranger or mere acquaintance, had said that thing aloud to me, or even within earshot of me, I would have stopped what I was doing at once. I would have stopped and turned and reached out and touched my face, a face I could tell I had carefully arranged not to look sad. I would have made a soft sound that expressed my empathy, and my inability to put that empathy into words -- "Oh" or "I'm sorry," something wholly inadequate. But I would have said it with all the gentleness I had.

Maybe I would even have said something that wouldn't be appropriate to say to me, a mere stranger or aquiantance, like "Oh, my dear." If I were a child, and I heard myself say such a thing, I would pick my young self up in my arms, and hold me for a long time. I would wish for myself that I had never learned the thing I had heard myself say. Not that the sad thing isn't true, because it is an undeniable truth. But I would wish for myself that I had managed not to learn it, that chance and happenstance would so collude together that I would never have had to learn that true, sad thing. I would have wished blissful ignorance for myself, if I were an acquaintance I could have sympathy for, could clasp the hand of.