the Infinite Monkey speaks: on the peak of thirteen
Random brilliance from across the blogosphere…
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Standing on the peak of thirteen, my childhood looked to be a million miles away, the pathway back, long forgotten. On that first summit of my teenaged years, I thought I would be able to see the world, or at least find a clearly marked path that would lead me to my dreams. I didn’t know what they were yet, but was sure I would recognize them once I saw them. No one told me it would be so hard.
– yearstricken
from:
Crossing the frontier of childhood
∞
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steadily skipping stones 
You know when they do try and tell us we never listen. Or I didn’t anyways. 🙂
I still don’t!! I think most of us really just have to learn through our own experiences. Not everyone, but most. As I get older, at least I recognize fact and I try to not let that be me, but mostly I just can’t help it. I still have those “young” thoughts like, “Yeah, but that won’t happen to me.” Or, “Yeah, but I can do it better,” or right or with different results. It all amounts to the same thing: I need to find out for myself.
Last night I had dinner with my high school boyfriend. We spent four hours filling in the gaps from the past 30 years. At first it was exhilarating, then exhausting. By the end of the evening I felt shell shocked. So many lost opportunities, strange twists of timing, and following an uncertain path to the present. All those choices we made so long ago when we were just kids. That “clearly marked path” was what I thought I was following, but I’m not sure we ever find that path–or if it even exists. Maybe life is nothing more than a series of side trails that veer off, run parallel to, and sometimes lead us back to the clear path, whatever that may be.
You’ve hit it on the nose for me. I said earlier this week that I had finally found the path I’d been looking for, when really what I should have said was A path. My visualization of that was that I could see the light through the overgrowth and branches at the end of this path. What I didn’t say is that, in my imagination, this path leads to a clearing, like a little park where you can rest and picnic. From this little park, when I’m ready, there are so many other paths to chose from, some marked and some barely visible.
I think that life if simply filled with choices – vast choices. It wasn’t always like that, and we’re incredibly fortunate to live in the time we do. That’s true for most of us, anyway. But that freedom can be daunting, too. I’m someone who thought she knew what she wanted to do when she grew up, but then found out that she really didn’t. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, and it is harder now to think of “starting from scratch” because I have it in my head that I’m too old. But that is part of the brush I am cutting down on the first path – making myself reject the idea that I can’t do what I want, that I am too old to change, etc.
Thank you for posting this. I think I felt a certain bewilderment at that age. People have been living on the earth for ages and ages, so certainly they should have figured out how to live and would leave some signposts for me. And of course, some are put up by parents, teachers, and religious leaders, and they can help us on our way, but the landscape keeps changing, so the signs can be confusing. We are each of us cartographers of our own lives, leaving signs for the others coming behind us, getting lost, and discovering how to find ourselves (we hope). And after all these years, it’s still hard.
I didn’t feel that way in my pre-teens or teens. I certainly suffered plenty of other miseries, but that’s something that I didn’t really think about too much. Mostly, the angst and bewilderment about the future and where my life was going didn’t start for me until I went to college. Then again in my thirties. I’ve always been a late bloomer :).
I posted a quote from you on my photo blog on Thursday, too. As soon as I read your comment, I knew I had to use it for that picture. That’s also what gave me the idea for posting blogger quotes once a week here. There are so many great things being said out there! Then you dropped the name for these posts in my lap, too! So Thank YOU!