by Justin La Grange
As someone whose sense of calm has rested upon planning, regularity, and certainty, it seems everything in my life has been anything but certain. It should be easy when society and those around you are usually so willing to box you into a definition, a label, as you progress throughout life and you can evolve with it and continue to define yourself along the way. For me, there's been absolutely no consistency in anything about me -- race, socioeconomic status, weight/body type/attractiveness, personality, religion/God, house, parents, friends, interests, athletic abilities, how much of a man I am, confidence, complete personality, identity, etc -- and no one willing or around long enough to box me into anything. I start to wonder exactly who I am, and life is scary when it always presents itself as an open slate. People say they hate labels -- I yearn for a label.
People wonder why I'm such a packrat sometimes -- I need to hold on to something, to keep it fixed, to keep it there.
My friends wonder why I'm so nice or go out of my way sometimes -- I guess I make the extra effort to hold onto them, for fear of having their stability slide away. I love them for being there when it seems like nothing else is.
People wonder why I love to go on a plane and float throughout airports and cities across the country and the world -- I embrace the idea of elegantly crossing paths with thousands of other people who for just one day are anonymous blank slates with no known or assumed fixed path in a safe bubble along with me. And I'm desperate to flee a locality where everybody around me seems to have an identity and a path they will follow through life until they die.
I didn't grow up in households that assured me God was there or had a plan for my life, and to this day I struggle with God. It's scary thinking life is nothing more than a violent sea of colliding molecules and atoms that can take you anywhere and never protect you.
I don't understand people that "know" me, because I barely "know" myself.
Have you ever felt that the more you've seen, the more you realize you haven't seen much at all? Likewise, have you ever felt that the more you seem to know yourself and the more experiences you have down this road called life, more questions and elements of uncertainty are raised in an exponential fashion? Answers that you might never have -- about life, existence, and yourself -- as time escapes from us like sand through an hourglass.
I hate age and time because it changes on me in ugly ways. Only roughly nine periods of how far I've already lived will bring us back to the Revolutionary War. My parents and my quasi-parent aunt are all pushing 70, and time killed all my grandparents long ago. Damn you time.
And that brings us to love. I can't promise my best friends and family that I'll be exactly the same tomorrow, but I can promise that I will love them -- you. And when all else fails and I'm drowning in a sea of uncertainty, sometimes it's all I need to keep me going. Knowing that if there's anything good or consistent about me, it's that I can love even when I don't show it or am too afraid to.
Love is something I can be confident about as life buckles me through its sandstorms in an everchanging amount of directions.
And when I think about hating a world filled with so many people that I love, I remember that the world around me and people all share the same molecules and atoms, just rearranged in a different fashion. All beautiful in the miracle of our existence if you're willing to look closer and see -- love and beauty are everywhere if you want to find it. Time can never change that.
