Chapters
Lately I've been feeling like I'm on a new chapter in my life. It's kind of weird actually because it gradually snuck up on me. I didn't notice until I started discovering a lot of people from my past on Facebook. A good many of them found me, but after I started getting turned on to Facebook more I started actively looking for people from my past. It was very exciting to see people whose mental image I had retained become unfrozen. Suddenly a 16-year old girl in my mind becomes a mother of 2 kids, an 11-year old boy I used to play with when I was 11 is now suddenly my age and married. It's a weird and interesting thing how people can be frozen like that in your mind.
The euphoria of re-discovering my past seems to be the catalyst of the new life chapter I seem to be on. I should say it's the catalyst of my awareness of it, because I've been in this for a little while now. It really does seem like life has cycles, or chapters. Just the way I've been thinking since my late teen years till now seems...distant. It's as if thinking in certain ways feels simultaneously foreign and familiar now: familiar because those thought patterns used to be own and I recognize that, foreign because they no longer seem to occupy my mind. They don't enthrall me as they used to. I suppose it's not unlike how a child at some point puts down their toys because they no longer interest anymore. The teddy bear that once brought comfort is left forgotten in a dusty closet, no longer needed.
Life is most certainly an interesting journey. I'm starting to think the beginning chapters of our lives are largely automatic and biologically driven. That is, you hit puberty and a shift happens, at some point you leave your parent's care and take care of yourself. After that the chapters in your life are written by you to a far larger degree. What will they consist of and how long will they last? Questions all up to you. What will their themes be? Who will be the principal actors and actresses? Where will the setting be? What will be the story of your life?
I read something today about creative geniuses. Being The Vain One that I am I put myself in that category for a while. The part about journaling made me smile. "I do that!", I thought. It's a nice thought to play with, to consider myself a creative genius. But not wanting to get too distracted by myself it's probably best to remember there are many many creative geniuses in this world, even if we need reminding from time to time. :)