Being
I bought a one way ticket to Minneapolis.
It costed me $119 and grants me berth on Delta airlines.
It’s been nearly three years since I’ve been back.
I imagine the overgrowth of time have covered the singular and eccentric paths that I once tread.
I imagine friendships have grown stale with the air. They’ve lost their stickiness, the oft-repeated stories becoming lost to the whispers in the wind.
I imagine younger and more disillusioned millennials have taken over the apartment where I spent so much time deliberating and debating with my peers.
Yeah, yeah. I know. I’m not the first guy to wax nostalgic over his collegiate years. I’m pretty sure that I won’t be the last.
It can be kind of hard to tell when you change. Sometimes it happens in the most… intimate of ways.
- A dad wrapping his arm around the shoulder of his daughter.
- A boyfriend smiling when he watches his girlfriend gleefully open a package of sponges.
- An interviewee doing his best, all the while you’re sitting at your desk glumly looking at Reddit waiting for it to be over.
The problem about change is that after it happens, you’re still there.
You see, there’s an interesting premise about Star Trek teleporters. The idea is that when they disassemble your body and reconstitute it someplace else, you’re an entirely new person. You might have the same body parts, even the same thoughts, but what made you, you, that is no longer there. It very well could be that you are no longer the same human being you were when you first stepped into the portal.
I think about this a lot.
Sometimes, I try to wrap my brain around it and realize just how inelastic brains can be.
For four years, we put ourselves in these places that very much change us. Then, we leave the places and pretend that it is going to be the same upon our return. And, for the most part, it isn’t.
People move on. Life changes. Restaurants that we once haunted now haunt us.
I don’t think that there is too much that can be done about it. It’s important that we reflect on the nature of change, but I don’t think that we should resist it.
I want to embrace it. To be in it.
It’s been three years since I’ve been back.
I can make new paths, even when tangles of time makes the proceeding that much harder.
I can breathe air back into friendships gone stale. I can replace the stories that were lost with ones of love, happiness and joy.
I can host my friends, spending time, talking and deliberating with my peers.
Just because I’m not in college anymore doesn’t mean that I can’t embrace change anymore.
I’m planning to buy a one way ticket back to California.
It’ll cost me $99 and grants me berth on the Sun Country Airlines.