The Illusion Of Distance
It's odd that we can be apart for so long living our own separate lives, doing the day to day things that we do, even being and seeing other people, all the while though, the feelings that lie beneath all of that remain the same.
Children have characters. They are born with a certain disposition, and all of the changes that you go through in life, are they ever really that deep? Sometimes it seems that we are like rivers, and although we change, our paths do not, that was laid out for us with our birth and all we can do is determine how wide, or with how much ferocity the river of our life will flow.
Often enough we give up too easily, letting the illusion of hard work and sacrifice shield us from the truth. That truth being that we are avoiding that which we should truly do. It doesn't make the interim work any less noble, or beneficial, but simply, it isnt what is meant to be.
In the end its nothing more than looking at a lightening storm several hundred miles in the distance across the expanse of the lake in the darkness that only occurs when you are far from the lights of the city that I realize that this is frightening. The orange and yellow glow, the amber spark of the sky, the way it stays illuminated a bit longer than the flash of lightening itself.
Turning around, I gasp, because up in the sky where the lightening isnt, where the clouds aren't, there are stars. In this darkness they are here, but to me they aren't hopeful, because they are a reminder of being alone in the universe, but at the same time I can see the majesty behind them that captured the imaginations of all of our predecessors for hundreds of years. But now we have science which has revealed their secrets and like childhood fantasies destroyed the illusions that they created.
So which is more real? The imagination or the reality of atoms? But that's not the right question, because what does either have to do with being happy? Then again, what is the point?
On the one hand as I'm going to do something tomorrow that I've talked about for years I feel nothing. Not the usual pangs of anxiety that I experience the night before my birthday as a kid, or the anxiety I feel the day before I go to pick up a new car. At the same time I dont have any negative emotions either, like the fear that maybe I'm not as good as I hope, or living up to my own or other people's expectations.
I do not think it is because I do not care, because in fact I do care. I would venture to guess it is because I'm at peace and that with every mile I traveled I have left a small piece of Moisey behind. But not the good parts or the bad parts. Simply the parts that he was invested in without really determining if that investment was something he decided on or something that he stumbled into. Because in the end, my good character makes me responsible, but being responsible and being good doesn't mean that I'm doing what I was meant to do.
Perhaps, this is what I was meant to do and so there is no fear, or excitement, there is just the moment.
There just is.