Disillusionment
in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you
completely in anything. Disillusionment then in living that gives to you very
many then melancholy feeling, some despairing feeling, some resignation, some fairly
cheerful beginning and some a forgetting and continuing and some a dreary
trickling weeping some violent attacking and some a letting themselves do
anything, disillusion then is really finding, really being certain that no one
can completely agree with you in anything, that, as is very certain, not, those
fighting beside you or living completely with you or anybody really, can really
be believing anything completely that you are believing. Really realizing this
thing, completely realizing this thing is the disillusionment in living is the
beginning of being an old man or an old woman is being no longer a young one no
longer a young man or a young woman no longer a growing older young man or a
growing older young woman. This is then what everyone has always been meaning
by living bringing disillusion. This is the real thing of disillusion that no
one, not anyone really is believing, seeing, understanding, thinking anything
as you are thinking, believing, seeing, understanding such a thing. This is then
what disillusion is from living and slowly then from failing again and again in
changing someone, after finding that someone that has been fighting for
something, that everyone that has been fighting something beside you for a long
time that each one of them splits off from you somewhere and you must join on
with new ones or go on all alone then or be a disillusioned one who is no
longer a young one...
This
is then complete disillusionment in living, the complete realization that that
no one can believe as you do about anything, so not really any single one and
to some as I am saying this is a sad thing, to mostly everyone it is a shocking
thing, sometime a real shock to them, to mostly everyone a thing that only very
slowly with constant repetition is really a complete certain thing inside to
give to them the being that is no longer in them really young being. This is
then the real meaning of not being any longer a young one in living...
from: The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein