What Were We Thinking

“Do you think we made a mistake? You know the whole getting married thing.”

“I suppose it’s possible. People do make mistakes, and we have certainly made our share. Little late to think about that, don’t you think?”

“You left without a word, just gone. I know you had your reasons, but you left everyone wondering what they had done to cause your disappearance.”

“It had nothing to do with anyone. More like when it's snowing, building up a little at a time until you can’t get the door open to get out, let life in.”

I guess after you’ve been with someone a long time you begin to take them for granted. The mystery is gone, there is very little new that surprises you, and for all practical purposes your dreams have materialized and are not what you imagined them to be. The future is no longer a bank of fog waiting to be explored, but the reality of a sunburned sky, and only the memory of a moon.

It seems natural to back track, looking at the fork that took you took, leaving you to contemplate the possibility of the other. I’ve always believed what keeps people together is their interest in achieving certain mutual goals. No matter what they are. But at a certain period in life you realize there is not enough time left, goals are no longer attainable. The thread that bound the illusion together has weakened and finally breaks, leaving you untethered to the present, in no need of a future, but only a past left that reminds you, you did live, are alive. 

That is the time you begin to go back through life like it was an old scrap book you’d kept forgotten under the bed, until it was time to leave. Downsize, find a more accommodating environment that doesn’t require the effort it takes, just to maintain, survive. 

At first you are afraid to open the book. It is no longer familiar. The first few pictures, you can’t believe that the people in the photos are you, and her, and them. Were we really that young? Did we really have the passion it took to go into the world and grab what we believed we needed, wanted, no matter the roadblocks.

But then we were that naïve. Life was there for the taking. Failure was not an option. Then as the days turned to weeks, months, years and then surprisingly decades, you realize that time is no longer on your side. The reality of success, even change, hangs higher than you dare reach. The fear of failure is no longer just fear, it is an illusion you are too tired to dismiss.

The dutiful ways we spent our time, knowing we had an obligation to our dreams, to their dreams, now, those dreams are no longer our responsibility. They belong to those that take our place. We cannot watch the sunrise for them, nor can they watch the sun set for us. No matter, our worlds overlap, they are separate, as different as Mars and Venus, yet both share the same eternity for a while.

When a shared experience, or many experiences begin to diverge from their path, like a river changing its course, ripping the stability from its banks, spreading out to become no longer recognizable as the force it once was. All that is left is the picture of the rushing water, the memory of the spirit of that force, and a reason to believe it had done what it did for a reason, even when we do not understand the purpose. Even though it no longer resembles the river you knew, it remains one.

When our biological clocks have run their course, the drive to replace ourselves is gone, what is left? Are we to sit back and reminisce about the past as though it was a story told about someone else, someplace else, or do we begin to realize if we do not seek the thrill once derived from experience, do we wither, do we simply disappear?

I believe unless we gain some notoriety, which most of us will never achieve; say a Hemmingway, a Falkner.  We will slowly be dissolved by time until our two generations of reality have become only memories for someone, and possibly strangers in faded photographs in an old shoe box in the basement. 

Our lives when collated, inspected, labeled, We begin to acknowledge we are no more than what we feared all along, the nothingness of promises we can no longer believe, but must hang on to because it is all we have left. I wonder sometimes if someone in the future will stumble inadvertently upon a piece of our history and cherish it, not because it once belonged to me, but because of the beauty they have anointed it with. Not the object itself, but what the object represents, to them. 

We all create our own environment within a world that we can fill with the things and people that can and do testify, to what we have spent our lives attempting to accomplish. Perhaps that is all we are entitled to, all we ever wanted, having the remnants of our life, and what it represented in one form or another, outlive us.

“Do you believe there is a chance to start over, or is there too much baggage. All the smiles, tears, wounded egos, and disappointed hopes, all erased so that we can once again see that there is more to life than what we have lived. I would be willing to forget in order to be able to see, and to hope, and to wish and dream. If that is all there is, then it is better than what we have, and what we proclaim it as all that is left. Is it worth the effort, given the clock continues to move, and the strength it takes to keep it wound lessens with each passing day, with each misplaced hope? What do you believe is possible, if anything? Or are we to become like so many, little more than walking dead, using up resources for no other reason than we are expected to, a perk of growing older, having survived.”

“I don’t know. I do know I am tired of feeling empty as though each day steals a little more but forgets to give anything back. The balloon rising, knowing that once the energy cools it will begin to atrophy and forget what its purpose is, and then have nothing left to do, but fall back into the reality of six feet of earth and an eternity of regrets. I feel I am worth more than that, and you are too. We don’t have to accept the message, but we shouldn’t ignore the messenger either.

The vision of a tomorrow is born only when you believe there can be one. If we do not believe, then we may as well surrender and save ourselves the rejection that comes from giving up. I am ready to leave the present, and the past, for a chance at a future, even if it lasts only until the next breath. Getting to know each other again, as the people we have become. I could use some help getting there, if you are up for it.”

“I don’t know if I’m able to be of much help, but I am willing to try. We were friends once, lovers once, parents once, and we had dreams we watched become reality, and dreams we watched crash and burn. But what seems as important now as it did then, is that we tried. Count me in. The idea of dying with my boots on appeals to me more than dying in my bedroom slippers, or simply fading like the pages of an old calendar, until you can’t make out what day it is or why it matters.”