That moment you look through old photos and start to look back on your life. You go through people you once knew, not very well but you were new to this whole thing – college. A new city, a new state, new people, new feelings. How quickly we forget how we felt in those moments. How we really felt in those moments. They say that when you remember something, you’re actually remembering the last time you remembered it. Which is insane, but interesting at the same time. It means you can change your feelings about anything based on how you feel about it in the next moment you remember it. Manipulation at it’s finest. Keep that in mind, but that’s another story for another time.
I’ve been thinking about going back to school in hopes of actually finding a career. I have two bachelor’s degrees, but because of some past shit I may or may not be able to. I’ve left my hometown yet again but it isn’t really working out so I’m trying to make another decision.
Bring me to this morning and I’m reminded of what I’ve been missing in my life. I’ve been missing the new and exciting. The thrill of really being somewhere new. Of being forced to go out and live. But also being surrounded by people so I have a chance to meet some friends. And that’s it – the difference between moving somewhere as a college student and moving somewhere as an adult.
I’ve always said that to know where you’re going you have to know where you’ve been and I’ve forgotten exactly that. I’ve let the bullshit of things that really don’t matter take over my life. I mean they matter but not with the emphasis I put on them.
Life is messy. It’s far from black and white. We are people. We shift and change and grow and sometimes growing means growing down and not up. I’ve been yearning for something I know and have an insane, intense relationship with – my hometown. It’s not that I’m homesick, at least not in the traditional way. But I’ve been trying to take the easy way out. I’ve been trying to go back and it seems that I hadn’t gone back far enough. I had to go back to the first time I ever really left and that made all the difference.
I had to go back to before I was so jaded by life and what was going on. To a time when the world was still new to me. I have to believe that that’s why people had roles and traditions in society. Now we throw caution to the wind in hopes to move forward and society is failing itself. I mean I know traditions have flaws but honestly… there are milestones in life for a reason. They make us who we are at that point in time. They keep things that are new and exciting. A relationship, a marriage, a family, a house, a life with your family and around your family and I mean extended family. People knew and were open to committing. And I mean committing to jobs and careers as well as people and relationships. And yeah it didn’t always work out and yeah things were messy but we’re people. There are so many things I feel like I’m missing in my life. Some of it is me and some of it is the world around me.
I sit here trying to figure out myself as usual and I know how much I’ve changed and shifted over the years and I know I’m not done. Any time I seek knowledge and something new, I’m not done growing or changing. But how does this effect my perception? Of me? Of the world around me? We quickly forget ourselves at our best and worst eventually because we constantly have new bests and worsts. We all change. We all have a past and some sort of future. We all have to build it ourselves. So where am I going? I have no idea, that’s some thing I have to figure out on the way there… but where are we going as society and is it better than where we’ve been?
Talking Over the World (formerly Diary of a Tactical Maverick) 