Past Lives

I'm thinking a lot about how many lives we live in this one, sometimes. There's the process of going through all my letters and stuff from when I lived in Seattle 14 years ago. This morning a friend asked me and another friend to describe ourselves in high school. My initial response was "what year?" I was sort of a changling back then, trying on different costumes, music, and habits to see which ones fit. And there's the more recent past-- I had coffee last week with two of my volunteers from when I ran TIP. Or the other day I ran into the friend whose ex-wife set Scott and I up over 6 years ago. Even driving by our old house, just a mile or so away, where we still lived a year ago at this time, feels somewhat foreign.

As uncertain as I sometimes feel about what I'm doing with my life and what the future will look like, all I really have to do is look back to remember how unexpected and wild a ride it is. I am not the type who will have just a few careers-- I've already racked up more than a few. I used to fight this-- thinking there should be some one thing that I do with my time here. And there are throughlines-- writing is the biggest one. And though my interests change and all the cells of our bodies replace themselves every seven years, in some ways, in am still the same person I was with the bad perm or the short purple hair or the Guns N' Roses t-shirt.

And I could've no more imagined this life here in Maine-- almost as far away as you can get from Alaska without leaving the U.S. With a lovely old house and friends whose faces I never could've imagined and the funny, clean-cut boy who plays golf even in the rain and cold. And there is something so comforting about this to me. That we get new chances, that things change even when life feels so static. So when I stress about the future, I have to remember that I don't have all the facts. Not even close. My little vista is so very limited. There will surely be bad hair cuts and embarrasing outfits in my future, and people I love who I can't yet envision, and heartbreaks I don't want to.

So, could you remind me of this next time I'm freaking out about what to do next with my life?