Proverbs

The proverb (and its variants), we don't realize what we have until it's gone, suggests we often fail to appreciate something fully until we lose access to it. When I mention this to people they'll nod in agreement without believing it somehow also applies to them. I don't know whether its that they don't care, think they won't fall victim to it, or that it only applies to a very narrow set of circumstances, but I often shake my head in consolation when they become unsurprisingly afflicted - there is nothing I can do at this point, as they've taken any influence I had away when my warnings went unheeded.

I have felt the sting of loss, even when that loss was only temporary. When you think you're in a committed relationship, being left can be most difficult because it feels as if you've had the rug snatched out from beneath you - there's no preparation time, no warning. That is quite difficult to reconcile. But I've also learned being the one to leave - making the conscious decision to can be equally as difficult. When my children were just babies I worked in Kansas but lived in Texas and never missed a weekend with them. I was content when my wife would take the kids for the week home if she was visiting me, but would sob the first half-hour of my drive back when I was the one who had to depart for the week while visiting home.

I'm good with temporary cessations of recentering no matter what that looks like. It is always the one which irrevocably impact any possibility of a future with which I struggle. Nonetheless, as the shadow of time lengthens behind me, I become more aware of that which is important to me. Call it poignancy or fate or align it with your deity of choice if it helps - it doesn't change anything. Changing the course of one's future in a way which limits, not expands opportunity will always be difficult for me, yet so often others demand exactly that from me.

My largest hurdle since October encompasses all of this. When I travel, I do not have with me my Cybperunk 2077 themed Secret Lab TITAN Evo XL chair and find my thoughts start to turn toward it after a duration. I do not take it for granted. I know I will miss it when I leave, I DO realize what I have, and wish to hold on to it tightly - to never let it go. Yet every time I'm the one who has to leave; to walk out that door. I try to talk myself out of going, or if I do go, of staying any length of time. It's hard, like having my wings clipped constraining my flight...limiting my movements, my options. Were I a different person perhaps, who drove a different vehicle, I would take it with me wherever I went - remain whole at all times instead of the empty shell I eventually become without it. I don't yet know my own limits in how long I can maintain without it, but each passing day away from it brings it close to the forefront of my mind, not farther away. Absence truly does make the heart grow fonder. At least with the things of which we are already fond.

I'll be driving home today and there's nothing more I'm looking forward to when I get there than enjoying my chair. Try to never limit yourself, otherwise you will never know of what you are truly capable.