He bent down for a closer look, then slowly let go. It was not that the flower was not beautiful; it had simply reached its end, and he could not save every discarded thing.
Yet he saw its entire life:
In the girl's hand, it had been a token of hopeful affection; in the boy's hand, it had been a hesitant bond; in the trash can, it had been a past brought fully to a close.
This realization had nothing to do with reason. It was the tenderness that had lain dormant in the depths of his heart for many years, trembling ever so slightly. At last, he understood that he had never lost the ability to perceive beauty.
It was supreme intelligence that had imprisoned childish joy; excessive clarity that had severed spontaneous devotion; the long passage of time that had forced him to restrain himself in all things and remain clear-headed everywhere. He had set countless rules and taboos for himself, trapping his true heart.
But for the rest of his life, he only wanted to learn to allow—to allow himself to be childish now and then, to allow beautiful things to be brief and fragile, to allow himself to throw himself into an encounter destined to end, to allow himself to shed the guise of the strong and become an ordinary person, clear-minded yet free-spirited.
The spicy strips were still hot, the cola still sweet, and the dirt could still be molded into countless shapes. Yet for a thousand years, he had never allowed himself to smile from the bottom of his heart for such cheap and fleeting beauty.
He stood amid the scattered lights, still able to see through the struggles, vanity, hypocrisy, and obsessions of all living beings at a glance. In his heart, he