maybe now is just now

I’ve always felt this strong desire for something I’ve called “stability,” but I’m wondering lately if what I’m really talking about would be better called “stagnation.” What’s more, when I say I value “security,” what I suspect I’m really saying is that I dislike variance from “routine.”

These statements may seem simple, but putting them into words is kind of revelatory for me. I’ve always know that changes of plans are hard for me to deal with – but I don’t think I’ve ever really admitted that the stability and security I purport to value so highly is probably just a more acceptable way for me to say that I don’t do well in liminal space, that I have a low tolerance for “in between.”

Take “now,” for instance. I have said recently that I believe that, later in life, looking back on these past few years, I expect they’ll all seem to be one “period” in time: the epoch that began with my father’s death, had a middle-section of leaving my career, going on the road for a year, moving across the country, losing my mom, and now this period of COVID-induced quarantine. I have thought that, looking back, there will be a discernible block of time from dad-dies to COVID-ends. And that, most telling, after that period of time we’ll go back to normal, to “stability,” to “security.”

But maybe that’s wrong. Or, probably it’s wrong. Maybe now is just now. I guess, it’s all but certain that now is just now. It’s not a moment of transition which will have a nice clean end where things return to normal… it’s just now.

And what’s more, I am almost certainly, to some degree, squandering now by waiting for it to end so that things can be “normal” again.

No; I certainly am.


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