Humans tend to systematically underestimate our propensity for change.
Roll back to last month or last week, and I would have resolutely rejected any notion of entering a long-term relationship and forming a family unit. Marriage is an obsolete institution, I’d have said spitefully. Rings are finger-shackles and a marriage certificate deed for the grave of your youth.
This morning I woke up with the unprecedented urge to nest.
An old friend is getting married. In a previous life, I’d have liked to be with her. A hackneyed story of unrequited love on its own, bitter is life’s aftertaste.
Except that today I find myself alone on a foreign shore again, much older though none-the-wiser, feeling homesick without a home.
It’d be nice to have someone to return to, I think, with whom to go grocery shopping, do taxes, plan date nights, go on vacations, fight in Ikea, and do all the boring stuff that makes up a life.
But this entry is not about that.
It’s about change.
Solitude has been my essential character, or so I’ve thought, yet I’ve changed. So how many other “nevers” have I been wrong? How confidently do I stake my future?
Perhaps a little humbleness is in order. Perhaps our future selves are strangers to us, and the most prudent strategy in life is to remain open to possibilities.
#00117F 