retrospective

funny thing about looking back on yourself. there’s opportunity to feel sheepishly stupid, nostalgic, all kinds of ways.

when i read the stuff i wrote in the past, i shake my head. i get a heavy, eerie feeling in my stomach because I WAS RIGHT ON. i hadn’t really experienced much in life, but all the truths i was discovering or thinking on at the time have only been proven or reinforced or revealed in more elaborate detail with time and experience. the song i wrote about love without ever having been in love? i felt silly for doing that, but it was the task at hand. surprisingly enough, that’s exactly how it was. themes of truth, humanity, life and death, all that stuff that young people with journals write about out (the ones who aren’t hopelessly shallow or egocentric), all of them have panned out just as i suspected they might.

you might be thinking that this is all a matter of my conceit and that i merely feel that i was right because i’m so arrogant. after all, i idolize being right, right? well, though that is honestly the case in other parts of my life, that’s not really what’s going on here. because it surprises me that i wasn’t wrong. i mean, what could i possibly have known, being who i was in the place i was?

has enough time elapsed to do a retrospective? it’s been less time than would be appropriate for most people i would say, but there is something particularly aging about working in my field. you just grow up faster when you’re surrounded daily by illness and death, with your hands laboring at works of healing and saving.

when i was about, oh, 20, i asked God for wisdom. i didn’t know what i was doing at the time, but i knew that if you ask, He gives it. once you clarify with yourself what wisdom truly is then you are aware when it is there and when it isn’t. anyway, i very clearly remember that period of time, when the pursuit of wisdom seemed like the right thing for me, and i wonder just how much that has to do with who i am today.

i also immensely enjoy reading over my old writing style. i’ve lost so much ground in that area—especially with this recent pseudosenility that seems to be attacking me. instead of flowing phrases, i’ve started jotting things down in skeletal half-sentences to capture the point and the context in a hurry, and then i have to go back to fill in style and detail. it feels really bad. and when i do have flowing phrases, their rhythm is very awkward and disagreeable before i edit and edit and edit again.

here’s an example:

optimism in the morning helicopter trip with the smoky horizon and the miniature houses with the snaking trains and the twinkling lights, not far enough away to feel grandiose but far enough to see all and wonder at it all. why has this made me feel optimistic twice in a row? sunrise over the city, beginning of the day. cars getting started. cars in lots in perfect grids. quiet schoolyards and outdoor amphitheatres. ponds and pools shimmer in a fascinating ugly artificial blackness. baby on a stretcher, sleep deprivation, beginning of a day? end of a day? there are things in life that are good and you should look for them. you should look. look.

oof. anyway.

maybe this is an indication that i should listen to myself more often.