5.9.07

when i was a kid, i used to go lie at the top of my driveway in Alta Sierra after dinner and stare at the night sky. sometimes i'd stay up there for half an hour; sometimes as long as three hours. i'd meditate on the vastness of things and think about where my life might take me. i'd force myself to stay there longer than was comfortable, so as to challenge my own spiritual will.

at my mother's house, i used to walk around in the snow while listening to music on my cd player, and i'd find the biggest field possible and sit right in the middle of it: as far away from things as i could possibly get. i was young - fifteen or sixteen - and sometimes i would cry, or sometimes i would feel myself filled with the most overwhelming sense of awe and beauty and wholeness, feelings inspired by the silent beauty around me and its stark contrast to the busy nature of my mind.

the amount of soul-searching that i scheduled for myself as a kid, in ways similar to this, is plentiful. i didn't reach many breakthrough conclusions, but i learned to be in awe of things even without understanding them, even when feeling subordinate to them. i learned to be familiar with a state of mind in which i could toss things around and counter them with the apparently-linear timeline of my days, and infuse them with whatever silent wisdom my surroundings had to offer me. there was a calming essence to such moments, and it was the act of escaping to nature, escaping to seclusion, and escaping to music that got me through a lot of tough childhood stuff.

i was talking to my dad the other day about a conversation i'd had with an old friend regarding the topic of childhood, particularly negative aspects of it. my dad said, "weird", and i asked what he meant by that. he said, "i don't know. it seems weird to rehash things like that." i think he's got a point. as essential a part of the self one's past might be, perhaps just as essential is a willingness to let things go. some things will always bear influence on the individual, whether the person realizes it or not, but some things can be tossed to the wind for later sense-making or for total disregard. maybe the point at which disregard of past baggage does not seem like the act of cutting off of a limb or a sad removal of something essential is the point at which it is necessary. i won't disregard memories like my walks in the snow, but i won't think about all of the same things that i used to ponder when i took such walks. growth is about taking on the new and not about dwelling on things that hurt in the past.