a meditation on interrupted boyhood, the loss of innocence, trauma, modernity, neglect, precocity, and repression
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“You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were thus expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity. Wherever you have turned, James, in your short time on this earth, you have been told where you could go and what you could do and how you could do it and where you could live and whom you could marry. I know your countrymen do not agree with me about this, and I hear them saying, ‘You exaggerate.’”
t is the nature of a thing to be a thing, and this is good. A thing of wow to wow, a thing of beauty to be beutiful, a thing of bounty to be bountiful, and a thing of
wonder to be wondrous. So as it is the nature of a thing to be a thing, it is it's antithesis to pervert it. A thing of wow to no longer wow, a thing of
beauty to wilt, a thing of bounty to become barren, and a thing of wonder becomes mundane. Yet it does not accomplish this through fear, nor force, but splendor.
This is the nature of evil. Both a great light even as the sun, and one of no warmth. In face of this light and to remain a thing of wow, beauty, bounty, and wonder,
you must swallow the sun. Knowing you'll be left with a glowing belly by night. But when wonder cannot be destroyed outright, it is sealed away. That
is the quieter face of evil: not to burn the child, but to hush him. To praise his brightness in the daylight, then lock his joy in the attic at night.
Repression is not always the work of enemies—it is often the gift of those who call it love.
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Yotam, Kris. (Jul 2025). Boy, Interrupted. krisyotam.com. https://krisyotam.com/essays/philosophy/boy-interrupted
@article{yotam2025boy-interrupted,
title = "Boy, Interrupted",
author = "Yotam, Kris",
journal = "krisyotam.com",
year = "2025",
month = "Jul",
url = "https://krisyotam.com/essays/philosophy/boy-interrupted"
}