Neil Young asked a good question.

What if your world should fall apart?

That's a good question, Neil Young.

There is no doubt that at some point or another, something affects you so profoundly that you become very attached to it. But when that goes away, it hurts. It hurts so goddamn much. And the wound only festers even more as you ask questions like "Why?" and "How?" with desperation in your voice. Shutting your eyes tightly, to try to shut away the sights of the world.

It hurts because as the inevitable conclusion has been reached, you realize that what ever you got attached to is gone. Right before your eyes, that belief that whatever you experienced would last forever or for a very long time is gone. Gone is what you held so near and cherished so much that it caused you some kind of peaceful pain, if that makes any sort of sense.

What you were attached to goes beyond just "attachment". It crosses into some inexplicable zone that transcends and defies obvious or even thoughtful explanations. Mind-boggle City. It's a mysterious maze with endless twists and turns with thorns everywhere and exits that drop you off the face of the Earth. Or leave you at the entrance. Or leave you in a comfortable chair with Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto lounging nearby between songs. Because of this, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. The answer changes from person to person.

What if your world should fall apart?

Everything's going to fall apart at some point. Everything.

Why? Because try as you might, nothing will last forever. But that's not a bad thing.

The safety net that you gaze upon so lovingly will burn up and leave just a pile of ashes. This is temporary. From the ashes a phoenix might rise. Or some other metaphor that involves sweeping the failures of the past away like the following:

Your free fall that is not interrupted by anything and the impact upon crashing, and broken bones, all that stuff... just temporary. You'll stand up again and realize your world has fallen apart. You'll be bummed out at first but not for a while.

You'll think about everything prior, during, and after. It will blur into itself. And produce more questions. A wheel that will eventually stop turning somehow.

The person eager to get back on track, sometimes in a premature haste, will be the first to say something like, "deal with it" and "move on." While that is sound advice, it disregards the time it takes to heal and repair the self. Returning to some place unprepared is never the best move on anyone's part. So being quick to move on while admirable in some vein, is ultimately foolhardy and ill-advised.

Another more meditative person will say something like, "These things happen." The problem is that the more meditative person tends to meditate too much and will let their world keep falling apart. Not a good move either.

So what would I do?

In my perpetual search for that fabled balance, I will try to bring the polar opposites together. This doesn't always work but it beats eating undercooked meat or burnt ashy toast. At least, that's how I see it. Everyone's different. My method may not work for others and admittedly, it barely works for me.

The key thing to keep in mind is that nothing will last forever, or as long as you want it to. Your world will inevitably fall apart at some point in some way. Everything really is quite temporary and dwelling on them won't do much.

What if your world should fall apart? Let it. It'll end up rebuilding itself somehow at some point. What can you expect from the reconstruction?

If there's anything to pull from this post in regards to the title question, it's probably this:

If your world should fall apart, rebuild. You'll figure something out somehow.