mandalay

Wax philosophical

After reading Joanna's Friday memos and visiting Nate at Ruta Maya this morning, I've been thinking a bit about change. Sometimes when I'm feeling nostalgic, I look back on things and wonder at how different everything is. At the people who have come and gone and all that kind of trite whatnot. But the truth is that I haven't been in a routine that lasted more than a couple of months in years. Everything cycles, including the people in my life, and while there are very occasionally entities that seem to thread themselves into my life for years at a time (family, choir, a select few relationships), for the most part, things are continually in flux. Does anyone out there actually have a true routine, a set group of people that you hang out with almost exclusively, the boundaries unchanging, for years at a time? Would you want to? The times I get truly nostalgic for are usually periods that lasted only a few weeks or so. The 3 weeks I spent in Montana in 2001. The couple of months the same year where Craig hosted ranch parties just about every other weekend. The crowd I worked and hung out with at Mozart's. Everyone I know seems to be leaving and staying; i.e., even those who have no plans to go anywhere and have been where they are for years have been thinking about leaving and preparing to do so in some way or another. I have three friends who are teaching right now and all of them are looking beyond it. Elizabeth is thinking of grad school and Aleena is looking for something else. Allison just got a job at an ad agency in Dallas and moved there last weekend, but she views this job as temporary, something to do until she gets a job somewhere else. Is anyone where they want to be? Does this say something about us -- that no one is content, that even when what we're doing is good and we enjoy it, we're still looking to what's next? There's a quote from Socrates that I don't know if I've used in here but it's one that I've always found interesting: "There are but two tragedies in life: one is not to get your heart's desire -- the other is to get it." What will it take to be truly content? And could you handle it if you were?

Labels: future

posted by amanda @ 3:28 PM