I like to go back to the many places I've lived. As a kid, we moved more than the average family for many reasons. For specific reasons I like to go back to each place. Some places are close enough for me to add them to running routes, others I find ways to pass pretty often on my way to nowhere near their location. I think life has gone by too fast and it's nice to go back and try and visit some moments in whatever way you can.
I drive by certain ex-homes and find them occupied with really, really old people. Or drug addicts. I drive by a house and see myself throwing a football into the air as a kid and running underneath it to catch it just in time before my imaginary defender tackled me in the end zone. Sometimes I even wore a fake Chicago Bears uniform. I drive by others and see where I would build snow forts, shoot blow darts at ducks, shoot rockets, hide knives, and drink booze. Every location reminds me that there is so much stupidity, yet so much beauty in being young and learning how to be ok in a world that eats it's own.
Life is way too short. We should all be able to lay down at night in comfort because we are eternal and God is good. But some people, like me, believe all that stuff, yet find themselves in dread most of the time.
When I think of these times when I was just an ignorant kid trying to cope, I tell myself, "I wish I knew then, what I know now." Then there are other times that I say, "I wish I knew now, what I knew then."
The world takes things from you. It takes moments....days....weeks. Everything that causes stress and anxiety fills us in and pushes something beautiful out. Our minds seem to only protect the truly sacred moments. Other wonderful moments go into this file cabinet in the back of the room that someone has lost the keys to; like and undeveloped roll of 35mm film laying in an attic.
Until a grandkid finds that film and has it developed, bringing back everything all at once. It may be a smell or a song. It may be a place or a little strange crack in the sidewalk that brings back these beautiful moments you wish you would have stored in the sacred. Because life was too short when you made those memories and you forgot to remember them for what they were. They were your childhood, and you don't get another one of those.
If there is a moral to this, it's to try to stop forgetting the great stuff. Forget the bad. We tend to always remember all of the bad because we like to feel sorry for ourselves often. Let that stuff go. Hold on to the things that make you happy and make you smile. It's way harder than my words make it out to be.
Sing.
Migrate.
Thanks for reading...Z
