Open

Roughly fourteen years ago, I published a post on another of my personal blogs (one I have long-since ignored and essentially abandoned). Today, when I returned to that blog and that post, I was reminded that life changes quite a lot over time. But the person who lives it tends to remain the same, except for the changes wrought by unwelcome adjustments. People die. Friendships blossom, then lose their petals. Expectations shatter. Promising relationships dissolve in the face of time or distance or disinterest. Dreams collapse. Hopes, confronted by reality, disappear. Those  changes do not transform the person, though. He is the same man, just bent and dented and disfigured by experience and the sting of wisdom. Fourteen years ago, I wrote about wanting to accomplish long-held wishes and objectives. The intervening years have not fundamentally changed those aims, but the desires held all those years ago have encountered obstacles—some of which are insurmountable. Fourteen years can radically change certain aspects of a life. In my case, those years heralded the replacement of late middle age with a period of greying and regret borne of neglect. Reading between the lines of that fourteen-year-old post, I encountered enthusiasm, some of which has since withered. But I discovered that some of the experiences that have occurred since then are alive with possibilities. And, of course, I realize I am not the only one whose life has changed over time. We’re all the same as we were, but very different. And open to new possibilities.