Do you ever wish you could transplant the essence of your being today into the shell of your being yesterday? In other words, do you ever wish you could take what you know now and live in that mindset back then?
I drove to my parents’ place in Georgia last night and went strolling through my old university stomping grounds today. Dang. I felt this yearning for yesteryear — a yesteryear from another dimension, that is.
A yesteryear that doesn’t see me holing up at my parents’ house every moment I’m not in or commuting to school. A yesteryear that sees me living on campus and joining groups and clubs. A yesteryear that wasn’t about surviving school so much as it was about capitalizing on it.
Capitalizing on this now lost opportunity to integrate with a tribe also yearning to find itself.
I walked across campus today, the north lawn and my old English building and the stadium and downtown. I thought about the man I’ve become since graduating 7 years ago — more willing to take the risk, more open to vulnerability, less confident in my innate goodness and more desperate for grace, buckets of it.
I’ve started this other blog with a podcast and a budding Patreon community, and I can only imagine the life I’d be leading today if I’d started doing all these things in college, turning online community into real-life brotherhood. What friendships might I have made then, and what friendships might still be?
Alas.
That’s all. Just alas.
No cheery transition.
No “bright side” or “on the other hand” or “but Jesus.”
Just a long slow melancholy walk of yearning for the man I am now to be the man I was then.
This is Day 23 of #MakeNovemberTolerable. Keep checking back every day this month for new stories and discoveries of beauty where beauty may be hard to find.
defending dissertation https://helpon-doctoral-dissertations.net/