I spent this past weekend in DC visiting a friend - one of the few people left in my life who I share memories with that date back almost a decade... It was a fun and interesting trip. I took a bus from Penn Station, left at 6:30pm on Friday in the pouring rain and didn't step off in DC until 11:15 pm... almost 5 hrs later... yikes! But other than the rain delays, the trip was decent - clean bus, movies (Dodgeball in particular kept me entertained for a while), a book and my iPod - enough to entertain my mind while I stared out the window at the glossy blur of head and taillights.
The weekend wasn't too exciting, we never made it out to any bars, concerts, or monuments - we did however spend some time in a few of the Smithsonian museums, which was about all I wanted to do considering that I was battling the onset of a head cold. So a little art, food and movies... lots of Advil cold&sinus - not exactly how I had imagined it, but exactly what I needed. The trip did a lot for me - it really helped define my independence... as if moving to NYC without knowing a soul wasn't enough... I sat on that bus and thought to myself, "wow, it's really just me." It also got me thinking about time - decades, years, months - why after all this time is it all so different and yet still feels like my life? So this is what I came up with...
It's so strange how much our lives change and we just keep going. Day after day, new decisions, opportunities, people, places...
I realized this weekend that for most of us (excluding the people who are born, raised and die in the same house/town)... a lot of things can change, and fast... but only on the surface. What lies deeper in all of us, the emotional attachments to people and dreams... take much longer to change, if they ever do at all. Regardless of how "spontaneous" people claim or desire to be, I believe that at our core we all hold on to thoughts of what our future might be. Whether it's our future with another person, in another place, or working another job... there's a lot that people hold on to regardless of their new environments. I think it's because love and hope are some of the strongest emotional ties we can make.
So it got me thinking about the kind of meaning that you can have in another person's life. You are either someone on the surface - or a part of someone's plan. They either see me as a fun shopping companion this weekend and perhaps a few more in the near future, or they picture me at their wedding. Perhaps this is a little too black and white... but bear with me...
Luckily - plan's change - and thank goodness for that because if they didn't I would be married, probably pregnant, and living on 30 acres somewhere in Tennessee... (ugh, did anyone else just get chills?)
But do our plan's keep us from letting in what's at the surface? Do I not take an opportunity in New York because I always imagined myself living in Colorado? Do I let a great guy go because I think an old flame will rekindle one day? If we trust that our plans will come true, are we overlooking a life we never imagined or are we just being true to ourselves?
Hmm... this is why it helps to have an iPod to entertain my mind - otherwise I could think myself in circles all day...
Regardless of what this all means, and I'm not even sure that I know any more...
I think you can learn more about life if you take some time to dig a little deeper... stop looking at situations through your own little rose-colored life plan glasses and find out what other people's perspectives are. People are much less complicated when you stop trying to make them fit you and start understanding where you fit for them...
Ok - so that was my Psychology 101 attempt for the day... the other point I wanted to make was that since moving to New York, I had forgotten how much I loved the sky... how big and beautiful it is. Here it tends to get lost among the sky scrapers; your eyes always looking down to avoid trip hazards, people, or moving vehicles. But in DC, the sky was enormous and blue and it made me so happy. I have to admit that after taking the "red-eye" bus back to NYC this morning, hopping in a cab at 3:30 am and seriously starting to wonder whether the driver was high on crack... I was beginning to wish I was still in DC with the jeep top down, cool wind on my cheeks and bright blue sky all around... but then I woke up this morning, safe and sound in my warm bed, some orchestral piece on NPR playing in the background, the sparkling Hudson and empire state building both in my line of vision... and I changed my mind.
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