First day of school, again

As opposed to everyone else here, I do not look up when the door opens. I do not wonder if anyone coming through the door is someone that I know, or someone that I worked with, or someone that I went to high school with. I am not in this class a few months after graduating from high school, or a few months after finishing last semester.

And yet, I do not feel any older than any of the other students in the classroom. That may have more to do with the fact that everyone feels old when they have to get up at 5:45 in the morning. Or it could be that everyone is quiet, as we are waiting for the professor to arrive. With no one talking there is no voice to use to gauge any of these peoples ages, no subject or context to measure their years. Of course, I have also never been very good at measuring age by a person's looks either.

Age in general seems to be a flawed way to determine how old someone is. I am 29 years old, but I certainly do not feel that old. Than again, how old is 29 supposed to feel? I recently had a birthday, but I do not feel any older than I did at 28, 27 or 26. I know that I look older, show outward signs of how much this poor body of mine has been put through by my heart and mind. Is it just our body that ages, or does our consciousness age with it? Does it age at a different pace, slowed down not by time but by the events that we live through? Or is it ageless, something that will go on when our body fails around it?

Or am I just really, really tired? Does this train of thought mean that I should never pass on breakfast? Maybe. Maybe not.

Elephant curses

Why do we find it so hard to forgive others for their mistakes? Not just the ones that hurt us, but any of their errors? I can see how the things that are done to us personally have a longer shelf life, but we all hang on to the oddest things before, if, we find it in ourselves to forgive someone for their transgressions. Is it because we find it so hard to forgive ourselves for our errors, for the times that we have hurt those around us? We then carry that weight around with us and it affects everything that we do, all of the decisions that we make. Are we waiting for someone around us to do the same thing, make the same mistake, so we can can justify whatever we did?

We all make mistakes. We will all, at some point or another, hurt others. Sometimes we do in unknowingly and other times we unfortunately intend to cause pain. This is especially true the closer you are to someone. The truth of relationships between people is not that you can hurt each other more than those that you are not as close with, it is that you will hurt each other more.

Or is the problem not that we have trouble forgiving others, but that we have so much trouble forgetting? We are so scared of being hurt, and rightfully so. The problem is that this worry keeps us from truly enjoying new people, as we are so positive that they are going to hurt us the same way that someone has hurt us in the past. All of the new people we let into are lives are set against the events and people that have come before them. It is surprisingly hard not to attribute the faults of those that came before to those that come later.

I find it hard not to be worried about the wrongs that I have suffered through repeating themselves. What I realized is that if I do not open myself to the chance of them happening again, I will never find the love and acceptance that I seek. You have to take the chance of being hurt. Even if it has happened before. Even if it has happened more than once. Even if it has happened every time. I have to believe that it is worth it when you find it.

I mean, if it's not that I am so suing Hollywood for a seriously huge amount of money. Especially Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Fucking Sleepless In fucking Seattle.

You control your level of involvement

The things that we do in our lives, the decisions we make, color the rest of our lives forever. No matter how small, no matter how big, they will always affect us. I have made good decisions and I have made bad ones. I do not think that there is a way to find out whether or not they have balanced out, other than to say that I am happy with who I am, with my life in general. The challenge seems to be making all of them, good or bad, affect my life going forward in a positive manner. I suppose that as long as I have learned from my mistakes, my bad decisions, that I can avoid the problems that those choices led to. I suppose that as long as I have learned from my good decisions (which seems to be harder than learning from the bad ones) than I can repeat them.

The most important part of this seems to be making a decision at all. Whether we realize it or not, when we do not make a choice we are actually choosing to avoid it all. Which is a choice in itself, and not the best one. I feel like I chose to avoid life for a long time, as if I was scared of it's myriad possibilities. Scared of the scale of it. I hid behind my bad decisions, let them be what my life was about, let them be who I was.

I do not think that I am scared of life any longer. My life is what I choose it to be. I control my life simply because that is what I want. I will continue to make choices, good and bad, and will continue to learn from them. I will be the person that I want to be.

*Because it bears repeating, I wanted to thank my family that are friends, and my friends that are family. You have been with me while I have taken the long time to decide on living life. I will always appreciate it.*