Time for introspection.
As self-obsessed as I have been throughout my life, somehow I thought this wouldn't happen to me. Midlife introspection is for people who have had it easy in their life and never really had to think about anything. It's usually brought on by a gray hair, a love handle growing at glacial speeds, a death in the family. Midlife introspection happens to the people on Thirty Something.
Surely not to me.
Not to someone who spent so much time and money in therapy, bars, and lovers' arms. Not me. But there is that death. Is that when it started? When my little worlds I had spent years carefully creating and protecting with iron bars of will collided. You might think that the merging of worlds would strengthen my sense of identity, purpose, and direction not weaken it, produce sometimes insurmountable walls of distraction.
Not to someone who spent so much time and money in therapy, bars, and lovers' arms. Not me. But there is that death. Is that when it started? When my little worlds I had spent years carefully creating and protecting with iron bars of will collided. You might think that the merging of worlds would strengthen my sense of identity, purpose, and direction not weaken it, produce sometimes insurmountable walls of distraction.
Who I am in all of this?
I AM LOVED.
In spite of me many times.
I am an endless source of potential. Potential I rarely live up to. I am a promise whispered in the evening air before a storm. Sometimes I have the strangest sensation that I will dissolve into the ether like an expanding cloud of smoke. Other times my mind lies frozen in a still, vapid lake of distraction as if time itself is
holding
its
breath.
I AM LOVED.
In spite of me many times.
I am an endless source of potential. Potential I rarely live up to. I am a promise whispered in the evening air before a storm. Sometimes I have the strangest sensation that I will dissolve into the ether like an expanding cloud of smoke. Other times my mind lies frozen in a still, vapid lake of distraction as if time itself is
holding
its
breath.
I keep a calendar. It keeps me on course. Prevents me from stagnation. The demands of it disturb my mental lethargy and keep me moving forward. At least I think it is forward. Have you ever walked a road long and straight enough that you can see neither the beginning nor the end?
Actually it reminds me of middle school. Back then the buses picked you up if you lived two miles or more from the school. I lived two miles less 500 feet. So I walked to and from school Monday through Friday down this two mile dirt road. I COULD see the beginning and the end. Fortunately, unfortunately, I can't say. There was a stop sign at each. So for however long twice a day, I watched a stop sign gradually get bigger.
I wonder what the best analogy for life is?
Is it a race to the end?
Is it to grow closer to enlightenment?
Is it a cosmic accident, a typographical error that we just will NOT let go?
It's probably an indie flick where nothing happens except two characters drinking coffee, smoking hand rolled cigarettes in a dingy kitchen of an aging farmhouse.
...And...Scene...
Is it a race to the end?
Is it to grow closer to enlightenment?
Is it a cosmic accident, a typographical error that we just will NOT let go?
It's probably an indie flick where nothing happens except two characters drinking coffee, smoking hand rolled cigarettes in a dingy kitchen of an aging farmhouse.
...And...Scene...
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