well, i'm not the biggest john mayer fan, but lately (today) i have been major diggin one of his songs.
i think i like it because i've been thinking about age. age is one of my fave topics to think about, probably because it's tied up in death and time and change--my other fave topics.
today, i watched the world from the dry side of a windshield splattered with rain, and i had one of those "everyone else on the planet accepts this as common knowledge except you" moments: i realized i'm not getting younger. i don't mean this in the typical way, which is a resentment or denial of aging--i mean that i'm on a track that only goes one direction. in other words, i realized i am moving steadily (can you believe how reliable time is!) towards the end of a unique experience (life), and every moment is a new territory that won't come round again. this is a revelation i can't share or even translate, but i'll try anyway because if i don't (and if you don't, in your own way), we'll understand each other less.
i was about to say that i'm in this stage of life where i always feel part lost and part found, but then i realized that is likely to be true for the rest of time unless and maybe even if i work really hard on my foundness.
that's what i think life is for: finding and being found. ('did i find you or did you find me?')
the point of the lost/found bit is that i sometimes wrongly think that circumstance will make me found (if only i was graduated or married or had a "real life" job or lived abroad or had a house with shelves to hold the things in those boxes that have my name sharpied on the side), and i guess other people think so too because they ask me often what i'm doing with my life as if waking up every day and trying to do better by God and my neighbor humans is not something big.
sister and i had a conversation about this the other day, and do you know why i love my sisters? they remind me that i'm a bird who's built for flying, no matter how much i like the ground. they remind me that it's one thing to be happy where you are and it's another thing to not even try to see somewhere new. now i have fresh dreams of being in the sky riding a steady gust, steady like time, riding like those birds suspended in mid-air with sails for wings.
so, a december toast to the places we're in and a pinky-swear-promise for the places we're going, where we'll honor the places we've been, long ago, and won't return.
3 comments:
Hi Cath. This is Brittany, Amy Candrian's sister (you watched my little boy at the temple when she got married). I just wanted to let you know that months ago, when I first met you and was impressed by how awesome you are, Amy shared your blog with me and I have been a devoted reader ever since. But I don't think I've ever commented, have I? Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I love what you write, the way you write, and that your writing always makes me think. I find myself feeling the same way you do in a lot of cases, but you express it much more eloquently than I ever could. That's it. I just wanted you to know that someone out there, who might not know you well, but appreciates your writing, thinks you're awesome.
I love this because I have been thinking about this very thing recently. Each day at work I am surrounded by people who tell me, at least three times a day, to "not get old." Well how do you respond to that? I think about how it was nearly 10 years ago that I started college and that pretty soon I'll be thirty, never a young adult again.
It scares me sometimes, this getting old. Particularly since there's no way to go back. It's interesting to me that now matter how young or old you are, you feel old. Does that make sense? Thirty sounds so old to me but if I were 90 I would think "what luck I'm young again!" Deep words Cath.
Brittany! I don't even know if you'll read this, but so glad to reconnect. (I've since started reading your blog too. Love this blog world.)
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