The hardened heart will once again be pure.

"I know that the older people get and the more they know, the more they think before doing anything. Above all, they lose that blind trust in the honesty and goodness of their friends in good times or bad. A child's glance is frank, clear, open. An older person's is rather closed, a little cynical, shadowed by hidden thoughts and tears of disillusionment." - Anaïs Nin, 2 June 1919

I've taken to riding my bicycle again - as a means of both recreation and transporting myself around the city - and it has enveloped me with feelings of nostalgia. I used to ride my bicycle all the time as a child, until the driver's license fell into my hands, and with it, the car keys. I took to it occasionally over the years, though not enough to invoke any meaning from it. Now, having shunned a personal motorized chariot - by and large, anyway, for there still exists the odd occasion when I must borrow a vehicle from a friend or relative - I do much of my traveling on the transit system, which is great for those long trips on which I can catch up on my reading or sleeping; however, given its questionable reliability (I'm not pointing my finger at any particular element), I'm growing increasingly fond of my bicycle, and, as a result, have found myself engrossed in days of yore.

As the Earth rotated and the Sun made its way out of view late Friday, I pedaled my human-powered machine along my "street of early sorrows", a stretch of four-lane road in a north-south orientation, located in the west end of Scarborough (which had since been assimilated into the city of Toronto some ten years back), lined by bungalows and schools and parks and the occasional shopping centre. I spent the better part of my seemingly short life in a house just east of this street, nestled in a cul-de-sac about four blocks inward; both the elementary and high schools I attended are on this street, though I don't find myself nearly as nostalgic for the latter as I do the former - I don't wish to elaborate on how it all started to turn sour upon entering high school, at least not in great detail, for it is beside the point I wish to make... come to think of it, it may just end up supporting it, after all.

Now, I'm a full-fledged adult, less than two years from my thirtieth birthday, wondering where the magic went, hoping to retrieve it. Considering the tumultuous years of my adolescence, I count about fifteen years of misfortune during which I felt myself unable to escape so easily to my realm of the imaginary - after all, how could I ever find a job or a mate if I didn't hone my skills as a social animal? - compounding itself year after year. As a child, I yearned for the supposed freedom that came with adulthood, only to discover adult problems more monumental, and "freedom" further and further away. My mind, once abound in wonder, found itself enamoured by thoughts of bills and first impressions and politicians and more self-loathing.

What happened to us? What happened to that magic, that innocence we once knew so well? How did we allow our hearts to become hardened? How did we become so afraid to love? Is it possible to return to the innocence of days gone by, or are we forever confined to this rotten state of affairs, forever victims of this negativity?

I, for one, along with many others, feel it's not too late to retrieve the magic. Through my spiritual teachings, I've learned that "the universe is you", that is, the world around us is a reflection of who we are, and we are a reflection of the world around us (it's a bidirectional relationship; it cannot be unilateral), thus the barriers we erect to lock the pain away only create more, until the walls collapse and our remains are found splayed over the sidewalk.

As old as I am, as many "adult" problems I have faced, I firmly believe the children are still alive within us, and once we've stripped away the layers of fear that shroud us, these children will once again flourish; they will once again be allowed to dream, to live, to blossom.

I bookend this entry with two excerpts from the early diary of Anaïs Nin, renowned for the erotica and journals she authored and the company she kept. She wrote these words at the age of sixteen, and they've struck me, nearly inety years hence, at the age of twenty-eight, thus prompting me to write this piece in the hopes that those of you trapped in the pit of despair can see the shimmer of hope whose rays always penetrate through the darkness.

"[H]e will see us giving each of all those "miserable ones" a chance to be as happy as we are. Then we shall see if kind treatment and happiness don't melt all those hearts hardened by misfortune." - Anaïs Nin, 20 August 1919