The Tides of Time…
I feel the tide of time changing.
If you have ever felt this, you know what I mean: it is the feeling that the course of your life is about to change in some profound and inescapable way. For me, there is also the feeling of new alternate realities being created at that moment when I make a monumental decision to point my life in a different direction.
The first time I felt this was as a thirteen year old. I decided to do home studies rather than go to normal high school as a freshman. I taught myself for a year, spent a lot of time outside, learned many new skills, and taught myself how to be an independent thinker.
The second time I felt this was when I was seventeen years old. I decided to move away from everyone I’d ever known. I was deeply depressed, hopeless, and didn’t care about anything anyway. I left because there was no reason to stay and no reason to go. So I went, because there was no reason not to and I’d already stayed in that spot for a long time.
The third time I felt this was when I decided to withdraw from university and from life. I was bored, weary, and despondent. I had no interest in wasting several more years listening to droning and egocentric teachers brag about themselves. I saw a way out, so I took it. This time, I cut off all communication with people from my past and began to lead a reclusive and uneventful life.
The fourth time I felt it was at age twenty-one, when I started to feel an urgency: if I didn’t get away from the town I was in soon, I’d be stuck there forever. I’d be destined to live the life that so many other people in that town lived: unhappy, hateful, regretful, miserable. I knew I wanted to move north, and I needed a steady income to do so. So, I did something to get out of there – went back to school for a degree. I escaped, and the tides changed. By then, I was twenty-three.
The fifth time I felt it, I was twenty-five years old. I broke down. I knew I had to change because I felt like I was drowning again. But, this time, I was drowning in my mind, not my environment. So I forced myself to change with the tide.
Now, at age twenty-seven, I again feel things changing. I know there is something on the wind, something coming that will alter my life in some way that I can’t yet understand. This year began fearless, and it will end as fearless.
As time sweeps me along toward my destiny, I am both humbled and awed. I get clues every once in a while about what is ahead, but I never know how it will turn out until I’m there.
This time, I have no clue what will happen.
I look forward to it.