Putting It In Context
It is soothing to believe our respective lives are like stories moving from chapter to chapter as they arc from origin to a logical conclusion. With a story we can assign values to lessons and characters and integrate them into our arc.
I don’t think it happens this way.
I believe I am where I am (a rather pleasant place) due far more to luck and random chance than to artful stepping from stone to stone. My life is more like a scatter plot in which I overlay a line after the fact. The line is just something I use to connect the dots and, if I change the value associated with the dots, I can change the line; change the story. My life seems more like a collection of Polaroids than a movie. These are my Polaroids.
BDK Ground Fort Construction
I was surprised when I once saw a picture of me as a child for the first time when in my thirties. The image was one taken at a school event by a classmates parent. I had no idea where I was or what I was doing in the picture. It took me a while but I eventually realized my memory was far less sharp than I was giving myself credit for. Most of the distant memories of childhood were centered on the images in the dusty shoebox I find under my bed once a year when I move it to clean the floor under there.