Life, that is.
Happy Monday, everyone. You know what every Monday needs? A little bit of identity crisis, and I’m here to provide it. I’ll be honest – I’m a really annoying person at night. I have a lot of feelings, and my poor friends (or family, or boyfriend, or whoever’s around me at 1:00 in the morning) have to deal with my self-pity and existential dread. For anyone who read my new year’s post, you might have noticed that I’ve started 2015 with a pretty cosmic perspective, and thinking about it last night was a little traumatic. The universe is very big – infinitely big – and that kind of perspective can be really shocking.
One-in-the-morning Megan is a fragile, sensitive creature. Any troubling thought is enough to send me into an emotional tailspin. You’d think that would inspire me to actually sleep before one, but you’d be wrong. Someday I’ll be a grown-up with adultlike sleep patterns, but not just yet. That’s actually what had me freaked out – being an adult.
You see, I’ve never been able to actually imagine adult life. I think my brain sees all the possibilities for my life, decides that, statistically, it’s unlikely to come up with anything accurate, and just shuts down. When I was a kid, I was always terrified that meant I was going to die before I reached whatever it was I couldn’t imagine – whether it be a field trip or high school or my wedding. I was so sure that, because I couldn’t imagine something happening, it wasn’t going to.
Which is silly, of course. Lots of things I never imagined have happened, that’s certainly not a condition for their existence. But for six-year-old Megan, “I’m going to die.” seems to have been the most logical conclusion. Kids are weird. But here I am, nearly fourteen years later, and I still have a hard time imagining a future for myself. No matter how much HGTV I watch (and it’s a lot), I can never imagine myself owning a house, living in a house other than my own.
That’s what got me started, I was thinking about how limited my time calling this place “home” is becoming. I’ll come back for two more summer breaks, two more winter breaks, and then, with any luck, I’ll be out into the workforce and living on my own. That was terrifying. I don’t think I’ve actually matured all that much, I still feel like a child, and yet adulthood is coming for me. And there’s not a single thing I can do to stop it. Whether I can imagine grown-up life or not, it will happen to me, just as long as the Earth keeps turning (which I don’t anticipate stopping any time soon).
It seems so logical – how often have we heard cliche quotes like “Time stops for no man.”? But the significance never really hit me. My inability to imagine my life changing doesn’t keep it from changing, can’t limit the world. But it can (and does!) limit me. The way I perceive the world and its possibilities doesn’t change them, just my access to them.
So for all the new year’s resolutions I posted last week in mind, I guess I’ll add one more to the list – keep an open mind. Life certainly does. I’ll leave you a(n admittedly cliche) quote from one of my favorite poets:
I’ve talked about this with a few of my friends, and their perspectives have been really interesting, so I’m curious to hear your ideas. How do you think about the future? How does it compare to how you thought about it as a kid? What’s surprised you about your life so far?
