The Past Versus the Future

I didn't attend my 20 year high school class reunion this weekend.  The timing of this event landed, most unfortunately, about six days after we moved to Seattle and 4 days after I started a new job.  With all of the driving, flying, packing, etc. it just ended up to be too much to justify yet another trip and all of the expenses that go along with it.  So, I did not RSVP and I did not go. 

Over the course of the weekend, I found myself thinking about my classmates, hometown and the reunion gathering with both sadness and a little regret.  Memories of fun times mingled with a certain odd and lingering melancholy.  Unable to put my finger on my nagging feelings, I've wrestled with a notion that stretches beyond mere interest in being part of the celebration and catching up with everyone.  Truth be told, many of the people from high school that I would want to keep in touch with, I already do via Facebook.  I don't like that I missed out, but this pain in my heart isn't really about that. 

No.  Mine seems to be much more of an existential angst.  A pull and tug between past and future and I'm living somewhere in the in-between.  My soul feels unsettled by all this new and different.  As humans, I'm convinced we are all moored to the familiar places and people we've grown close to and accustomed to.  Someone recently told me that it is our habits and routines that provide us with our self-identify.  What happens when we no longer have the known frame of reference and we have to carve a new set of rituals and routines?  An identity without an anchor is a tough, tough thing.  Then, it is followed by the pull of a history of who I once was.  The remembrances of past consciousness cuts jaggedly across the quest for a reinvention of sorts.  I'm not who I was.  I'm not yet who I want to be.  I am.  I'm not.  Who am I?

I realize this probably all reads like some crazy Nietzsche-type rambling.  I get it.  I also realize this too shall pass.  It is momentary and fleeting.  In two weeks, two months, two years, my ego will once again be intact, my soul once more anchored and my identity fully formed with fully ingrained habits and routines.  Ahh, relief.  To feel comfortable and whole.  But, with this wholeness comes the dull and itchy sense that discomfort leads to growth and self-discovery. Ok, and now I could pull in a whole Harry Potter reference of soul's in separation and cursed objects and well . . . I'll just end it there. 

Maybe this is the way it always goes.  The past remains in constant and continual battle with the future.  Both of them pull at you but is it possible to exist comfortably in both states at the same time?  

Enough Nietzschean angst for the night.  I need to go watch Entourage.