Tag: change

Forever, ever?

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We’re a forever oriented species. We think that if something can stand the test of time (which is an oxymoron considering time is indefinite), then it means something, it’s worthy of our attention. Relationships, jobs, happiness-the closer we aim to “forever,” the more it holds significance. We are obsessed with endings in this weird, meta way, in that if an ending happens, it means we Failed At The Thing, but if there is no ending at all, then it’s a success. So if something just trails on until the sun collapses in on itself and the universe’s consciousness shrivels up, that’s the marker of triumph? 

An ending is not an omen. It actually doesn’t even hold the binary of good and bad within itself; an ending is by definition neutral. I am always moved by the saying “all is well that ends well,” because it highlights the idea that it isn’t the ending we should fixate on, but everything that happens before it. If you truly loved someone with all the vulnerability and heart you could muster, and it ended, it doesn’t automatically curdle the entire relationship. If you proved yourself time and time again in your workplace and still found reasons to quit, it doesn’t mean that part of your resume needs to be burned. In your happiest moments, if you truly embodied the feeling and enwrapped yourself in every molecule of joy, it doesn’t make the lulls in your happiness proof you never had it in the first place. 

An end is change, and truthfully, I don’t think we’re forever oriented-i think we’re change resistant. Something starts and we’re so enamoured with the newness of it all that we hope and pray its trajectory never changes. New experiences are juicy and good for the brain. An ending must mean all this potent neural carving must come to a screeching halt, right? 

An ending is nothing more than a new experience flipped over. If you can’t let things end, all that luscious work your brain does during the newness will crack and dry into resentment. It is imperative we let endings take their natural course in our lifetimes, because that is the ebb and flow of the universe itself. Things begin and end in complete neutrality-why do we think our life experiences are any different? 

My Raspberry Life: A Yearn for More.

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One day you’re 10, and you’re waking up to the wet wilderness, putting on your dirt streaked flip flops to pick wild raspberries for morning pancakes. The foam soles bend around the gravel road, and you can feel every single pebble like the princess and the pea except you’re the king, the king of this very second. You let the silence hang, tight around your jaw, because even you know not to break the quiet of raspberry pancake mornings. 

And then one day you’re 25, and you don’t remember the last time you sunk your feet into grass, soil; and I mean nature’s grass and soil, not some city slicked park with cobblestone paths and pre-planted flowers and stiff lawn grass. You don’t remember the last time you truly let a silence cling to itself, because now they’re “uncomfortable” and adults are committed to tampering them with pseudo-niceties. You don’t remember the last time you had a morning red with raspberries and not red from tension, from yesterday’s unresolved woes. 

You don’t remember the last time you felt like a king, a god. 

Who feeds the adult raspberries? 

Things Unsullied.

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The eyes you have,
when you experience change,
wet like a newborn animal,
darting and buzzing as they move through the nameless, 

versus the eyes you have looking at familiarity, 
glossing over similarity,
running the same current over and over,
until there are no more sparks.

What happens between those sets of eyes?
When does it die, the wonderment? 

The Summers of Adulthood

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I’m a child of the hot July sun.

I couldn’t wait to peel a wet bathing suit off my taut skin after a swim. I wanted that first feeling of realizing the sun was still out at 9pm, knowing the season had just begun and anything was possible. I wanted blackened feet from being barefoot all day and bike chain grease on my calves. I wanted sticky popsicle hands that I would only rinse quickly under a hose. I wanted to collapse in bed after a full day outside and finally realize how exhausted I was. I wanted to put potato chips in my sandwiches. I wanted to sit by a crackling bonfire and feel the intensity of the heat. I always felt like I could sit right in the center of the fire and not be burned but feel alleviated.

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