As Time passes, it uses a life as a sort of luxury shooting range with which it can do as it pleases. It may cultivate lush gardens and manicured fields, with bees flitting from one flower to the other to sip the nectar of good health and disperse the pollen of prosperity. For an added challenge, it may forgo these gardens and burrow beneath the earth, creating sink holes of imploding dreams and acrid springs of dejected tears. Along the way, there will be plans erected by the owner of this life, and they will be ripe targets for bullets from the guns of Time. When we fear that life may be ravaged, we will deploy our hopes as deputies to guard our fields, but they too can die.
Essentially, we all change. Our plans, feelings, needs and idiosyncrasies are not static. It is interesting to look back at life and see just how things have been shaped by this dynamism. Do you like the same foods? Do you have the same dream car/girl/house? Is your career going the way you planned? Is it even the career you planned to have? How far along in life did you think you would be at this age? The person you have become is a conglomerate of experiences and emotions that do not always cooperate, but must coexist. Do you ever check to see if they are at each other's throats?
As I have aged, it seems that the complexities and priorities of my life have shifted. I am now both minimalist and hoarder, obsessive and compulsive, enlightened and confused. While some beliefs and plans have only been transformed, others have fallen victim to the target practice of Time. An infatuation with the '67 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 has been usurped by curiosity driving me to see new places (though I'd still like a Mustang fastback à la Eleanor). Whether a consequence of independent communication or Babel, the artifice of language (whether English, Spanish or Swahili) now puzzles me. My career path has also veered sharply off the course I had foreseen. I now imagine a life of writing and art and wonder if I would ever be able to make such a transition successfully. I no longer see love, material possessions, reputation or life's general path as the rigid structures they once were, but as living entities that breathe and grow just as I do.
I suppose it is normal for maturity to transform man, but can there be any benefit if man takes no notice of the efforts of maturity? Have our former plans and hopes perished in vain if we have learnt nothing from their demise? Life and Time have taught me to filter the burdens that bombard me, and to lighten the load I once carried with me daily. I have been forced to search for the exit to many a tunnel, or to dig one where none existed. I understand that, no matter what I face, it could always be worse. Still, there are things that overwhelm me. Time will tell how my maturity allows me to handle them.
Oh, how I lusted.
