Living a Life Under Construction

The first post on this blog was in June, 2004, when I was 32 years old. Today, it is early January, 2023. I am 51. A lot of time has passed. Wow, 21 years. It feels like a blip. Like no time has passed at all.

As I read the fist post, Stagnant and Confused, I am launched back in time to when I was trying to decide the next step in my career. I had been a journalist. Then I sort of let that go, and I was looking for new direction.

Funny thing is, I sort of followed a path after that post that has led me to where I am today. And it seems I have ended up in a place my 32 self would have wanted to be. But I already knew that. I did not need to look back on an old blog post to figure that out.

I know that I felt somehow I would have some huge impact on the world. And maybe I had some impact as a teacher throughout the years. The impact certainly was not to the degree my younger self wanted. Still, I feel okay with the life I have led, even if it has been created by a great many imperfect choices.
Like the cities we live in, our lives remain under construction forever

See, life does not necessarily go where we think it will when we are younger. There is no road in front of us, as Antonio Machado told us in his 1973 book, "Caminante, No Hay Camino". As we take steps, the road is created under our feet.

So it is with my life's road. For better or for worse, it is the road the road created by me. The thing our younger selves do not count on is that our lives will be constantly under construction. Our choices continue to build us. It is impossible not to change.

Choices we make are sometimes hoisted upon us by circumstance. Sure, we have many choices to do was we will with the cards we are dealt. Those choices are limited, though, by our own vision and our own willingness to take risks to pave the road that really matters to us. Some circumstances weaken us beyond our will.

Each life is marked by trauma, and the overcoming of trauma. This is the pavement we lay. Forks in the road do not really exist, then, because the road of the other choice is never paved; we create an image of the fork in our minds where it lingers in our memory as a "could have been".

Today I will make new choices that will continue to pave the road I am on, and I who knows where it will lead. I count myself as fortunate to have made it this far, and I am happy with my life, no matter how imperfectly constructed it may be.

I was desperate to make an impact on the world in my younger days, and that has not changed. I will continue to have hope in the choices I make for as many years as I am given the fortune to live.

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