the heat has gone to my head

I’ve recently had cause to stop, pause, and reflect on the fact that an entire year has passed, no slipped, by without my even realizing it. I specifically remember it being last summer. That frame of time was followed, in my recollection at least, by a very cold, drunken, and hyper-extended holiday period. Then all of a sudden--- poof--- there I was this morning, standing in a sweltering inferno of a subway station thinking that it would be more comfortable to set my skin on fire than to stand one minute more waiting for the F train. Hot damn--- another summer in the city is somehow upon us.

I didn’t immediately ponder all the wonderful, terrible, unique, interesting, engaging, disappointing, happy, and sad moments that I have probably experienced, without even realizing it, each and every day of this entire year that has suddenly passed; moments that one might argue make up life itself, and make it worth living. No, I thought about how far I had come this past year, and in some ways not so far at all, specifically in the way of love and work, and in that order.

I realized that we are taught that years are like Lego blocks, and as each one passes, that we should build upon the previous block of time, moving in a linear fashion onwards and upwards until we ultimately create the Lego land of our dreams; one that is even better than the one we wanted, but perhaps never got, for Christmas. We are also given a set of instructions, which dictate that we can do whatever it is we want within each of our own Lego lands, but that there should be four big constructs on which we focus our architectural energies: work, love, family, and home. We are told that it is these four constructs, like a four-square meal, that will provide us the necessary framework for sustaining personal growth, development and hopefully, happiness.

The Big Four are comforting in a lot of ways--- they act as cultural barometers, established to help us roughly gage our own personal levels of progress. But they are also very limiting--- and assumptive. Life isn’t always linear and as my mom always says, "it happens in cycles". Though I fear sounding a little too…shall I say, “Burning Man”…I am realizing that sometimes you have to tear down some walls, even start from scratch, before you can make steps forward; that with progression comes regression, and that this back-and-forth motion can even be healthy--- a sort of wetting of the feet.

But back to my initial realization on the fact that quite simply, time passes us by all too quickly and that sometimes you can look back and feel like you have no major, or even minor, blocks to show for yourself; that a few too many areas within your own little Lego land don’t even have a spare plank of wood to help mark their presence. My mom is a wise woman and another one of her favorite sayings is that, “you might expect to have it all, but don’t expect to have it all at the same time.” Perhaps this, and the knowledge that no two Lego lands shall be alike, is another comforting life guidepost to keep in mind.