Things Change

I had lunch with a friend of mine yesterday. I always enjoy my time with him and I really enjoyed the times we've worked together. We have lunch occasionally to catch up. It isn't a particularly deep conversation that we have, but it is interesting. We talked about work and what we are doing now. There are a lot of things happening at Motorola so I fill him in on what some of them are. We get to our personal lives a bit later.

"I went to Oregon this last Spring. I had an epiphany."
"Another one?"
"Ha. Yeah. Seems like I have a lot of those. Kind of. You know those times when you look inside yourself and try to figure it out."
"So you're having a midlife crisis?"
Holding up my motorcycle jacket, "Did you see what I rode in on? Of course I'm having a mid-life crisis. But I don't like to call it that. I like to think of it as taking an introspective look at your life and making course corrections."
"But you had plans. We've talked about them. What about Utah? What about Michigan?"
"Things change."

I think that if anything that has impressed me more in the past few years is that things indeed do change. I've lived much of my life wanting to live the life others expected of me. I wanted stability, confidence that life wouldn't throw me something that I wasn't expecting. I gathered stuff around me to give me the illusion that things wouldn't change.

Then, things changed. My life was thrown into a type of turmoil. I found an institution that I valued more than my life had been less than truthful. I realized how much harm it had done to me. After floundering around and long talks with my wife, I figured I had a new normal. I don't view security the same way. My kids will grow and leave me. That isn't something that I'm sad about. It is the way it is. I looked at my home. Granted, it isn't all that pretty, but it was "mine". Paid for many years back. Filled with things. I realized that I could lose it all and it wouldn't bother me all that much. It was only stuff.

I thought about the things and times that made me the most happy. College. I loved college. While I might not be able to relive my youth, I love learning. And I had nothing then. I talked with Tracy about the years after our marriage and how poor we were. Yet, we were happy then. Every weekend we packed up the car and took off to some god-forsaken rock garden somewhere in The West and camped. We had adventures. Even when we were struggling in Phoenix after graduating, we were happy. We had a little apartment that we could barely furnish. We had tennis raquets and a car. That was enough. When we finally bought a computer, it sat on the floor for want of a table. We could pack up and go anywhere easily because we didn't have enough to worry about.

I now find solace in typing my random thoughts. I can't seem to read a book as my ADD has taken over my brain. I take bike and motorcycle rides and cherish the times I get away from the security I thought I wanted so much.

So here we are. We are trying to shed ourselves of some of our stuff. We have a plan to start reliving our adventures. I have a bucket list of things to do -- elsewhere. I have a different sense of purpose. These things probably should be done when we are empty nesters, but since we started late on our family, our kids have a front seat view to my, our, morphing life. I don't think they mind too much.

Things change. They sure do.