This Thing Called Life

Why are we brought up in a smooth, safe, strawberries and cream, Sesame Street world only to learn that we must be broken?

To learn that the world is harder, scarier, meaner, and cruder than we could ever have imagined...
To learn that most of the time, you only want what you can't have...
To learn that there are no more revolutionaries...
To learn that you will dream of butter while scrambling to just get the basic bread...
To learn that you will yearn for art, music, ballet, literature, but only get tantalizing glimpses...
To learn that there is a mental ward in every hospital and emergency psychiatric plans at every campus...
To learn that millions of people are unhappy, and life is just a gentleman's agreement to paint a grin on and make sad people feel silly for not searching for a joy contagion...
To learn that the kitten won't purr until you pat it...
To learn that once you start the coffee grinder, it won't stop...
To learn that you've just wasted your time writing a stream-of-consciousness, but your stream isn't that much to brag about, after all...

There's a way to enjoy it, to shed the bitterness, to find a face and identity. There's a way to do it all--to lay back in the car and let the colored lights wash over you, the music flood around you, drown in each second before it dies and is gone forever.
There's a way to do it. I just know there is.