the war is over and we are beginning

“After you’re dead and buried and floating around whatever place we go to, what’s going to be your best memory of earth? What one moment for you defines what it’s like to be alive on this planet. What’s your takeaway? Fake yuppie experiences that you had to spend money on, like white water rafting or elephant rides in Thailand don’t count. I want to hear some small moment from your life that proves you’re really alive.”

― Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

I am perpetually fascinated by our ability to reshape our pasts into something better than they were. I spent a good portion of my 20s in the seat of power in our nation’s capitol, working 12-hour days and getting blackout drunk, passing out for a few hours and getting up and doing it again and the hell of all that is I actually miss it, some days. I did really amazing things, I did really fucked up things, I watched history happen, I helped make it and then one day someone I cared a whole hell of a lot about got killed by a plane flying into the Pentagon and suddenly I didn’t want to do any of those things anymore.

I was never happier than to be done with my 20s and yet some days I look around at my life and think, wow, what the hell, you are so far from where you were supposed to be, from what you were supposed to be doing, who is this person and what have you done with your dreams? Consciousness is a pretty messed up thing. Memory’s the greatest liar of them all. I was lonely and miserable and strung out and I don’t want to go back.

I am a week shy of entering the second half of my 30s and I have not done most of the things that I thought I would do when I was 22. And I probably won’t. Not ever. I probably have more failures in my life than victories, even, but at some point you realize that pretty much the only person in your life that’s keeping score is you.

Yesterday I sat in a public market and wrestled with my kids and drank mango juice and talked about how you make gyros with the eldest. We ate cupcakes and looked at Somali wares and argued about Star Wars backpacks and finished each other’s sentences. We read comic books and talked about the weather. Five of us, out in the world. Whole.

Dear 22-year old me: You can have Kilimanjaro, 1600 Penn is all yours. I have love. I am alive.