Cough! Coffee spit up on the computer screen! What? 20 years???
I mean, I know I've done tonnes of things between now and back in high school - a bunch of university degrees, a couple of careers, much travelling, and marriage - but inside of me is still that teenager wondering what she's going to do when she grows up, wondering how she's going to get out of her hometown, and wondering what kind of mark she might make on the world.
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| 1994, where have you gone? |
Just as The Man and his friends' 40th birthdays have given me time to pause and take stock of life thus far, this impending reunion (whether I'm able to attend or not) is just such another of life's touchstones, offering me a moment to see if I've done all the things I thought I might when I was just a bright-eyed and zitty-faced teenager.
And the truth of the matter is that I've done more than I thought I would have back when I graduated high school and also less. I don't have a house with a two car garage and 2.5 kids; I don't have a stable job with a high salary and solid retirement plan; I don't live on a quiet cul-de-sac with my school friends; I never wrote the great Canadian novel; and I haven't volunteered in Bangladesh.
But I've led such a rich and rewarding life over the past 20 years that my 17 year old self couldn't even begin to imagine the details. I didn't have the frame of reference to dream as big as I've lived so far, and I hope that even when I don't achieve all my dreams and aspirations over the next 20 years that I do so much more that I can't yet envision. Put another way, if the next 20 years are as interesting as the last 20, I'll be pleased.
I'll still be freakin' shocked at just how fast time flies.
40 may well be the new 20 in my head and heart, but math is still math.
No wonder I was an Engish major.
Over and out,
Joy
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