Coming Back
It's been over a week since I've gotten back to the states and life has wasted no time in getting its wheels right back onto the familiar track of my American existence. The roads are just as wide as I remember - a fitting complement to the similarly proportioned posteriors of those who travel them - the skies just as blue, and the sunsets still give the sky that beautiful hue of pink and purple, the single saving grace of life in an over-polluted city.
Transitions should be difficult, should they not? This feels too easy. It's as if I were waking from a dream and today is merely a continuation of that day six months ago. It's as if I had never gone to the airport that morning and never turned off the lights to my room, never threw the bag over my right shoulder and tucked my passport into my back pocket, never said goodbye to a place I hadn't been away from since I was old enough to dream of going away.
But some things are hard to get back into - this, for example. The things we do in life can be largely separated into two categories: the hard stuff, and the soft stuff. The hard stuff is the very basics of who we are, such as the way we speak a certain language or the manner with which we drive a car. They're hardwired into us so that we will always find an inexplicable familiarity in the grip of a steering wheel or the structure of a spontaneously formed sentence. They resist the erosion of time. The soft stuff, on the other hand, is like clay, malleable but impermanent. It includes things such as changes to our day-to-day lifestyle. It can be said that the nature of the hard stuff is core-based while the soft is environment-based. The former are tools while the latter give the former a reason for existence. A screwdriver can never change its composition, but it can be used on a great variety of desks.
A part of me questions whether I'm really home. Sometimes, every place I arrive at feels like just another state of temporary residence. But I suppose that's an awfully depressing way of looking at things, not to mention I'm sure that the mere idea falls within the confines of some logical fallacy - the specific name of which I've long forgotten since college.
Transitions should be difficult, should they not? This feels too easy. It's as if I were waking from a dream and today is merely a continuation of that day six months ago. It's as if I had never gone to the airport that morning and never turned off the lights to my room, never threw the bag over my right shoulder and tucked my passport into my back pocket, never said goodbye to a place I hadn't been away from since I was old enough to dream of going away.
But some things are hard to get back into - this, for example. The things we do in life can be largely separated into two categories: the hard stuff, and the soft stuff. The hard stuff is the very basics of who we are, such as the way we speak a certain language or the manner with which we drive a car. They're hardwired into us so that we will always find an inexplicable familiarity in the grip of a steering wheel or the structure of a spontaneously formed sentence. They resist the erosion of time. The soft stuff, on the other hand, is like clay, malleable but impermanent. It includes things such as changes to our day-to-day lifestyle. It can be said that the nature of the hard stuff is core-based while the soft is environment-based. The former are tools while the latter give the former a reason for existence. A screwdriver can never change its composition, but it can be used on a great variety of desks.
A part of me questions whether I'm really home. Sometimes, every place I arrive at feels like just another state of temporary residence. But I suppose that's an awfully depressing way of looking at things, not to mention I'm sure that the mere idea falls within the confines of some logical fallacy - the specific name of which I've long forgotten since college.
posted by Peter at 9:30 PM
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