I have been taking stock of my life lately. I don't know if it this New Hampshire winter, the six-foot-tall snow banks in front of the cottage, and the my general state of inactivity, but things just seem a bit daunting. Whereas my existential funk had a certain cache when I was in college, today it seem less interesting and more sad.
In the movie The Weatherman, Nicholas Cage's character says, "All of the people I could be, they got fewer and fewer until finally they got reduced to only one -- and that's who I am. The weather man." I wish I would have said those words, aside from the weatherman part. I could say that the idea of being an astronaut slowly faded away, as did the ideas of being a lawyer, a race car driver, a marathon runner, and a member of a think tank. All that's left is me, right now, at this moment, here at my computer, looking out at the snow banks and hoping for the spring.
This is not to say that my life is in a bad position. It certainly isn't. I have a whole lot to be thankful for. Yet, I feel that there is a whole lot behind me now, a whole lot that has faded in the rearview mirror. And I feel like some of those images that slowly fade away are very important images: the tree on top of El Cap, dimly lit from my headlamp, the knobs on Lotus Flower Tower, the way my mom and my sister look when they are laughing in the kitchen of our house in Wisconsin, my walk from Siurana, through the Spanish countryside, to pick up groceries four miles away. These are the big moments.
I often think that I am defined by the big moments--those moments of exaltation and success. It is more likely, however, that I'm defined my those innumerable times that offer no big moment for remembering. Like yesterday. What did I do yesterday? Nothing really; I just went through my normal routine. Who is to say that the thousands of yesterdays don't equal a significant sum that is applied to my current existential bank account? Who is to say that the day I topped out El Cap represents more capitol than those thousands of forgettable days? The yesterdays of my life. Maybe the yesterdays define me more, make me who I am now. Maybe I have no choice but to be me, at this moment, sitting at my computer and looking at, though not really seeing, the snow banks in front of the cottage.
