"As the Ruin Falls" by C.S. Lewis

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

And...I'm about to be a quarter of a century old.
Good heavens.
I need to reevaluate this whole aging and growing up thing.

Despite my passive aggressive silliness...being the bigger person is always nice.

Moral high ground for the win.

Hrmm...it may be slightly evil that I cackle every time I realize that I am freed from and no longer have to tolerate certain people and their questionable...immaturity.

Cackle that I am free and that some other much more naive and foolish person than I is the acting man of the hour...or minute as it were.