Look. Listen. Learn.

This weekend I ran face to face with my past. Not that I'm running from anything in particular, and I've never been one of those people who holds high school up to some pillar of greatness. But I do have to say it's strange to suddenly discover that you are selling $1 candy to your favorite childhood English teacher.

We feel the gentle tug of the daily ups and the daily downs and how smooth that all seems when held side by side to the face plant of your 18 year old self. I walked away from the experience completely torn. It was really lovely to see a man I so admired. He said some really nice things to me. I got to meet his family. But on the other hand, I was selling him candy. He asked me what I was doing with myself and there was no good way to answer. I didn't want to disparage the theater when I really do enjoy my job. I didn't want to talk about my bigger goals because they won't happen in that particular place no matter how great it is.

It's too easy to hold yourself up against what you thought you could be, but it's a false act. Life is harder in ways we never imagined. Childhood is easy. Childhood is easy and no child knows it. And it's from only that place of comfort and naiveté can you hold these ideals up and say, "I want to be great." To a child, greatness is a thin thin line. And that line is cartoonish to an adult.






The interaction was hard because it felt so dishonest. Thinking back if it had been a real conversation (and not one jarred by selling ANOTHER person a $1 candy or soda every 3 minutes) then I could have said that I know more about myself now than that 18 year old ever did. I know truths about myself now. I know what kind of people I want in my life. And I have those people in my life. I know what qualities to welcome and what qualities to run from. I know why groups of people exhaust me. I know why I'm always thinking through disaster scenarios. I know the difference between a clear comment and passive aggression. I know what love is. I know what integrity is. I know what art is. I know what kindness is. And I feel so incredibly lucky that all those good things are part of a life that I have actively participated in creating.

But we weren't in a space where that could happen. Instead I stumbled through this thing or that thing constantly aware that nothing I was saying was coming out right.

But what the interaction did teach me, and it's something I probably already knew just not in such clear terms, is that I'm not in the right place yet. I don't know if I'm any closer to figuring out what that place looks like or feels like, but I do know that it's not what I'm doing right now. And hopefully I can learn from this while the interaction is still fresh. I can think about what is is that's important to me. Because I know more now than I did before the weekend started. And that's something.