I just started reading "I'm Looking through You" by Jennifer Finney Boylan. I was struck by a bit she wrote early in the book. "Others become stuck, become Exes, haunting their own lives like ghosts."
While this is very true (and Art Garfunkel is the great example she used) I think many of us are stuck by a FUTURE. We are locked into a life we feel we cannot change. Jobs we can't afford to leave. Children we don't want to lose. We trudge through our life playing our part like the 47 Ronin or a Greek tragedy- trapped by events that have not happened yet.
I wrote before about just picking up and leaving. Follow Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarity across country and be who I need to be. However in today’s tough times, that is nearly an impossibility, as there’s that whole needing to feed myself thing. Yeah, I could stand to lose a few pounds, but total starvation wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t make a good looking corpse (my fast living, young dying days? I missed the “young” part of that.) Then there’s that whole daughter part of the equation.
I’m as trapped by her future as I am my own.
So where does that leave me? Stuck in the middle between past and future, me and where I need to be.
“Stop whining!” you say, and just get a move on. And usually you’d be absolutely right. However changing my life completely requires a plan, not just a hope that luck, love, or God will provide a way. To execute this plan requires resources- resources I will probably lose in executing this plan. So. I plan. And I hope and pray and wonder if I will throw off the chains of my future AND my past. “The Waiting,” as the man said, “is the hardest part.”
Someday I may meet myself in the middle. Until then, I have what little time I can find to be me.
While this is very true (and Art Garfunkel is the great example she used) I think many of us are stuck by a FUTURE. We are locked into a life we feel we cannot change. Jobs we can't afford to leave. Children we don't want to lose. We trudge through our life playing our part like the 47 Ronin or a Greek tragedy- trapped by events that have not happened yet.
I wrote before about just picking up and leaving. Follow Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarity across country and be who I need to be. However in today’s tough times, that is nearly an impossibility, as there’s that whole needing to feed myself thing. Yeah, I could stand to lose a few pounds, but total starvation wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t make a good looking corpse (my fast living, young dying days? I missed the “young” part of that.) Then there’s that whole daughter part of the equation.
I’m as trapped by her future as I am my own.
So where does that leave me? Stuck in the middle between past and future, me and where I need to be.
“Stop whining!” you say, and just get a move on. And usually you’d be absolutely right. However changing my life completely requires a plan, not just a hope that luck, love, or God will provide a way. To execute this plan requires resources- resources I will probably lose in executing this plan. So. I plan. And I hope and pray and wonder if I will throw off the chains of my future AND my past. “The Waiting,” as the man said, “is the hardest part.”
Someday I may meet myself in the middle. Until then, I have what little time I can find to be me.
Sophie, if you're planning, you're far ahead of people who are just complaining or whining.
ReplyDeleteThe waiting may not be the hardest part but it's definitely in the top 5.
Best wishes to you and I hope you're able to find the time to be yourself while you're working towards where you'd like to be.