Growing up, and up, and up...

I'll get around to posting a picture soon, so don't despair.

So this week, I sustained my first serious repetitive-strain injury. I have some mild inflammatioin of the elbow tendons, also known (allegedly) as Golfer's elbow. I cannot play the cello very much at all, and when I first realized how serious it was, I became extrememly depressed. If it weren't for the work I've been doing to solidify a solid purpose for living, I may have killed myself. For a few years, the cello was the only reason I got up in ithe morning.

But I've grown up, apparently.
I'm proud to be able to say that now, the reason I live is that my life is worth living. My purpose now is my potential, my potential for anything. It has lifted a huge amount of weight from my shoulders, weight that I put there myself as an intense, competitive, desperately attention-starved child. Did you ever tell yourself that you never wanted to grow up? I did it all the time, because I accepted what it meant to so many confused adults. To them, growing up was assuming responsibility: responsibility to family, society, "God", or any other silly nonsense. It isn't, though.
Growing up is great, because it means accepting responsibility for your happiness and your purpose and everything you want.

I could injure myself beyond repair, and never play again. But playing isn't the most important thing anymore, achieving is.
The paranoid voice in my head says I'm the last person on the planet to realize this, but I know it isn't true.

So, now that i've accepted a reasonable premise for living, and have rejected an unreasonable one, I don't have to care that certain people were happy to hear of my injury because of a certain competition that is coming up in a month. I can be self-interested in a way I did not know before.
This makes life look so different now, so totally different.