A Period of Seeming Dormancy Might Actually Been a Phase of Metamorphosis

There are some people in our lives who remain as one of those supernumeraries on our minds’ stage. Occasionally, some things or events remind us of them. We start to go back to the past and wonder what happened. We think about getting back in touch if only to say that we were just thinking of them. It feels weird to get back in touch. We had our in-jokes, late-night talks, and promises. It seems we’ll never go to that cafe together. Even if I were to visit it one day, someday, it won’t be the same cafe that we once talked about.

The sacred bond of a promise is broken.

Like a teacher intoning, “All right, class, back to your desks!”, the dread specter of purgatorial commutes loom ahead. Now, I think about the usefulness of a map. We’re all good at wayfinding. We’ve been trained since birth to look for simple, do-able tasks with boundaries. We measure each step that we take with how small of risk and responsibility we’re entrusted with. Oftentimes, we default to others. We’re less concerned with the boundaries and opportunities ahead of us, and more focused on receiving instructions on what is next.

Don’t ask us, tell us.

But the truth is — we can be the ones drawing the map. A lot of things will begin to fail when we do so. We will face constant streams of disappointment one after another. Success doesn’t mean trying ten things and making all ten of them work. Heck, it doesn’t even mean making eight of them work. Success means trying ten things, expecting eight of them to fail miserably but keeping in mind that two of them will drastically change your life. Hearing this, you would have been here telling me that the only drawback from the abstract concept is that I can’t draw. Easy claps.