It’s Evenings Like This

Lately I’ve been living for the promise of a break. Lots of breaks, maybe. I suppose things like seasons and semesters do that to a person. I’ve tried to keep some balance in this time, where every minute seems scheduled, and every day planned before I’ve even finished the one before. I can’t complain, really, because aside from inventing the calorie-less cheesecake and finally buying my boat, I am doing exactly what I want to do right now. Who would feel anything but lucky to say that? I still find time for a good run and a rare lunch with a friend and have somehow been fortunate enough to not give anyone the impression that I’m abandoning them for a choice they may not understand. Pretty. Darn. Lucky.

There’s a consequence though, to keeping up with a certain pace: the creeping thought of what else? Those ideas and the wondering that crawl into your mind, because the truth is they never really went away. It seems no matter the work we’re doing, the changes we’re making, or the lives we effect, the thought of what’s to come is far too powerful to ignore. Even if we’re making the best plans for the best times, we’re thinking about when they’re over. Even if we’re building the best foundation, the most solid it’s ever been, we’re thinking about the house that will reside above it. It is our nature, I suppose, and last night this was an apparent truth for me.

Last night was a perfect evening. The air was warm and light, the sounds floated through the trees not yet muffled by the heat of a long summer day. Taking a one-night break from school work, I took the dog for a long walk and tried to take a few minutes to take in everything around me. For a couple hours nothing was scheduled, and all I wanted to do was take advantage of that. But the evening was too perfect, and as I walked through the tree lined paths that lace through the neighborhood, I couldn’t help but think the perfect way this evening would frame life if my what’s next could somehow be my right now.

It was the kind of evening where you grill dinner, and eat on the patio. It was the kind of evening where the breeze is perfect, and it’s too early in the season for the bugs to bother you. It was the kind of evening where you put on a sweatshirt and pour a glass of wine to watch the sunset. It was the kind of evening that makes you glad you’re a person that can look around and appreciate the good, even with all the mess piled on top of it. Which I think I am—that appreciative person—but not altogether. That, I suppose, is not my nature either. It’s especially noticeable on evenings like this.

Rather, I wrestle between being gratefully content and continually driven. Last night, walking down the paths, I would catch myself thinking irrational things, like maybe this is the last perfect evening that will ever be. This is the last time the sun will shine at just that angle. This is the last time the breeze will be so gentle. Though I know that, one, these thoughts are likely untrue and, two, there are no guarantees anyway, I cannot help but for a small part of me to feel like I’m missing out.

Save the truths of timing and fate of which I am well aware, it doesn’t really change the thoughts from coming in. I think about how in many ways I have come so far and yet, I still see that there is more ahead. Those thoughts come in where ever and whenever they please, especially on evenings like this.