If I were to sit with myself for a while at this table, I would tell me that it didn’t go the way I thought it would.

I was young, and looked so thin, and sure of my ideas in that over-sized flannel shirt. With the world in front of me, believing I had the purest thoughts, standing cleanly aligned with my image of where I’d be, and what I’d become, with my eyes closed to the possibility of failure, and without a single callous on my hands.

Would I break it to me slowly, or just drop my own past in front of myself as quickly as possible, and wait for a reaction?

If the today I have now were given to me then, when I was just an idea of what I am now, would I become what I am? Would I have survived the parts of my past that were insurmountable, if I had known about them before? Should I tell me?

Would knowing that everything I believed then was only a fraction of what I believe now, strenghten my resolve, or completely undermine it?

If I were here in this cafe with me, from back then, and I showed me a photo of my sons, and my wife, and my life, would I weaken? or, would I just nod and look in my own eyes calmly?

If I were here now, could I bring myself to talk? or would I need to be reassured by myself? Would I need me to say that I became what I became because of how I lived, and how I responded to the life that demanded my choices change to accommodate a reality that wasn’t my role to define in first place, but was simply my role to live?

Would I be able to guide myself? Or would I need guidance?

Would I need me to forgive me for becoming who I am?

If I were here now, would I warn me? or would I ask me for help?

If I create my own legacy, and define myself through my life’s work, and my creativity comes from my life experience; what would I say to myself before I’ve had those experiences? Before my life? How could I know what would happen? How could I sit here quietly at this table across from myself and not give it away?

Would the weight of my past show on my face? and on my work, and in the eyes of my children, that I haven’t had yet, and the pain, that I haven’t felt yet, and the loss that I can’t even imagine yet?

Or, would I need to say anything at all? Maybe I would just see it all in my own eyes. Maybe I would just know, without my having to tell me at all. Maybe I would put my hand over my own hand and just whisper…

“it’s ok, it’s ok”

Maybe, I would be stronger than I am

now.

J

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photos are from windsordi’s photostream on Flickr (used under creative commons license)

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