Today I am 22 years old. for whatever reason, turning 22 seems much more momentous than turning 21 did. I can't quite pinpoint what it is. Maybe its the fact that i can't avoid getting older anymore. it seemed a million years away when I was 12, 16... 18. but now, at 22, I realize that I am not, in fact, made of youth or childhood anymore. I will grow to be an adult like everyone else. My skin will wrinkle, my parents will age, places I have loved will change. the world will spin on it's lovely axis and this grand story that is the universe will sweetly continue to unfold. And I, just a spec, will try my best to succumb to the will and flow of this ever-expanding infinite space we occupy ourselves in, and maybe find a corner, a small space to carve out, to find purpose, to find comfort. for a short time.
This birthday has been cause for a lot of reflection. Partly because, I can barely understand how its been a year since I moved back to Wisconsin. A year since Alex and I parted ways, a year since I turned 21. Everything and nothing seems to have happened this year. And in every way, I don't want this year to go uncharted. I've let that happen with the 4 before it. They are all a blur, a notch on a ladder that i attempted to climb to find.......Well, I guess I still don't know. But still. I let them wash past me. Completely unaccounted for and unappreciated. I don't want 21 to be that way too.
I think for the first time as well, I don't have grand expectations for the next year. With every birthday, and every new autumn for the last few years, I would drive my hopes to the heavens for what might be in store for me. Only to have those hopes smashed into the pavement and uprooted by real life. This is the first time I feel ready to move past doing that, and onto making the best of the way things are.
So I'm not going to make a list of 22 things i'd like to do before 23. Mostly because, no matter what list i could create, it could never really reflect all the things i'd like to do and it would be a bit self defeating. My world is uncertain right now I can only weather the winds that come my way and not much more. and that's okay. There will be a time for lists and goals and plans. But right now those have to wait.
so instead, I simply have a list of hopes:
I hope to smile bigger, I hope to laugh harder, I hope to love more deeply, and I hope i remember this: that this universe is beyond imaginably big. but it, just like me, has an expiration date. which in every way, makes it the most beautiful story ever told: we live in this infinite space, our cells are all created in the centers of stars, which are essentially the wombs of the universe. The furnaces that cook all element combinations into being. And somehow, some incredible way, those elements managed to meet and combine in just one perfect spot, in just the perfect way, so that we could be able to breathe. the odds are insurmountable, and the fact that we exist, that we have hearts that beat, and eyes that fill with tears, and hands that touch and give and hurt is in and of itself astounding. So given that fact comes the perspective that everyday on this planet, everyday i can look at the sky, is a beautiful gift. and all the little things that hurt and tear, they are rough, but no demons or dark days can take away the strangeness and beauty that is being alive.
Maybe its cliche
But i also think it makes this journey much more beautiful
And ends and accomplishments much less meaningful
As Buddha said
"it is better to travel well than to arrive"
All in all, i simply hope to make my travels brighter
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