Re: Pete

Pete,

Pete,

Of course it has occured to me.

I don't know how best to explain it, Peter. I'll l make a cup of tea, and mull it over.

There are people who know exactly what they want in life. People like you, who know that the place they were born is not where they will stay. I know that you aspire to be something greater than you are. And I do know that you left because you were (are) chasing all that is new and exciting and unknown. I don't claim to understand, but I know, and I will not hold that against you.

There are people who will stay in the same place from the moment they are born to the moment they die. They will be buried in the same grave as their parents, and their parent's parents, and they will turn to dust in the same place that they came to be, because that is the way they are. I pity them, and I envy them. To have such surety in what you want to be and do must make life easier to, well, live with.

And then there are the people like me (people whom I hope are out there. I fear that I am the only one Pete, because so far the only one I have encountered seems to be myself.) who don't know what is what or who they are and want to be. We lack the direction to seek the unknown, but we don't value constancy enough to stay. 

Everyone I know is settling down, moving in together, getting mortgages. I can't help but dread it. I feel as if I waited for this my whole life, to be a big grown-up who always knows what to do, but now that I am here, I find that there are two things that I never anticipated.

That being an adult entails much more than being all-knowing. Suddenly, there are important decisions to be made, and I don't feel ready to make them.

And that if the rest of my life is to be a figurative treadmill, that is to say, that I will run and run but never move forward, I don't want it anymore.

Yours sincerely,

Jan

(It was dreadful.)

(I am all too familiar with your position on loyalty, Peter Williams. You need not remind me.)