Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Backwards or Forwards?

I am not a fan of change. Tonight, thinking about the things that have changed in my life in the last year or so, and even from longer ago, I almost started to cry, thinking, "I just want to go back."

What did I even mean by that? Back to before I (or my life) changed in some particular way? Back to when I was a child? Back to this past summer, which I spent in a foreign country (and loved it)? Back geographically to that country itself? Or back to before I went there, before that experience and all the unexpected changes in myself that came after it and because of it? Or even "back" (if that is the proper word) to where I would be right now if I had not gone?

I can't lie to myself and say that everything was wonderful there and if I just went back, everything would be wonderful again (ahem--I may possibly have felt something like that when I first got back--ahem). I also can't lie to myself and say that I would wish away the experience, changes notwithstanding. Therefore, I am left not quite knowing what it is I am wishing for.

I am such a reader and writer at heart that at times my dreams are like novels or short stories; that is to say, I play a double role in them, as a character and also a reader, or as a character and also the author. In one "book" that I dreamed one night awhile ago, that I found interesting enough to write down the general idea of, I felt that I really only dreamed the introduction.

See, even though the plot that I did dream certainly had enough drama and conflict and oddity (it was a dream, after all) that, fleshed out, it could probably make a book (if I could manage to make said book quite make sense), as I was reading or writing or living it or whatever I was doing, I felt or knew that the bulk of the book and the really interesting parts of it were yet to come.

I have a choice, I suppose. (There are always choices, as my mother always says.) I could keep trying to go backwards in time or maturity or whatever it is I am trying to go backwards in. I could keep looking back as if all the best things are there. However, the futility of that exercise seems rather obvious. We live forwards, not backwards, and I (obviously) don't have the power to change that or to go back to what I used to be. So, if I am going to have to live forwards, the way everyone except Merlin* does, I may as well be looking forwards too (I imagine one would bump into fewer things that way). And who knows? Maybe the future is the "really interesting part" of my life, for the exact same reason that I'm sometimes scared of it: I don't know what it is yet.

ps I actually wrote this in the one o'clock hour, am, so please forgive if it is not quite my normal writing

*who, according to legend, actually did live backwards, which sounds terribly confusing, but would certainly grant "prophetic" abilities, as he could remember the future as if it was the past

1 comment:

  1. I know how you feel. Over the past year or so, I've transitioned from taking classes (something that I've done and excelled at since before I can remember) to working 30-40 hours a week at a job where my skills aren't being put to their best use. Its a transition that hasn't gone smoothly at all and there are many times where I wish I could go back to that time that was far more comfortable for me. The cool thing about these times of uncertainty, though, is that God uses them to bring us closer to Him and to teach us lessons that will allow us to be the people that He wants us to be. We just need to open our eyes to find what He is trying to teach us.

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