How much has really happened though? If you put it all out on the table, take a good hard look, what's really so different. People? A few, sure. Places? Not so much. Things? Almost certainly yes. What about the real stuff--how you feel, what you think, what you care about--who you care about. Those things are always more telling in the grand scheme of change.
Sometimes those things don't change--and that's alright. But sometimes, those things change quite a bit. It's in these categories that we really get a good feel of who we are at this very moment in time.
So, what has really happened in the last year I ask myself? It would seem a lot. How do we measure change like this--is their anything to gain from this metric? What do you do knowing how you're mind changes--do you run with it or do you cower from it? If we're telling the truth, I think there's very little to gain from understanding how much we change. Where do we apply this new knowledge? I don't think you can rightly start planning how your feelings and what you care about are going to change. How can that work?
So what do I see now? I come back to Maine and I see myself differently--in a much different way than I can when I'm home. Here, it's like stepping back in time one full year and asking yourself, 'do I see things the same now as I did last time I looked here?'. Unequivocally, I say no, I do not see things quite the same way. I see them more fully, with more knowledge and experience and with more understanding of how I fit into "it all". And that knowledge is generally more that I don't know enough and I know very little.
Maybe that is all we're meant to glean from such experiences--the knowledge that you don't quite know shit.
I'll take it.
