Different River

I heard from someone I hadn't thought about in over fifteen years yesterday. Nothing dramatic like Banquo's Ghost-just a quick email. I actually didn't recognize his name for a moment and then I did. When I'd last seen him, he was young, in a hurry and going places. The days stretched out before him like a blank canvas and he was hurrying to make and leave a mark.

From what I understood yesterday, very close to none of that seems to still be the case.That, of itself, doesn't make me sad as that's the way we are as a species on the big blue marble. The sad part (and I'm not sure that's the word I'm looking for) is how he gave up and gave in. I'm treading carefully here as I'm not nearly as good picking up on nuances on a screen or on a page as I am in a conversation. I can hear shadings and intonations that, staring at the cursor, as the little message flashes "J--- is typing", will never be able to do for me.

From what I could sort through near the end of a back and forth touch typing contest I lost, very early on a person with great promise made some bad choices and compounded those with others designed to extricate him from the first ones and he wound up surrendering piecemeal the gifts he'd brought at the start.

We were the same people we had been the last time we had stood together in the same room as he popped in to visit before heading to, literally, the other side of the earth. But what he'd seen and done had maimed and marked him. I, the stay close to shore guy, had imagined a world of adventures for him not unlike the world he had hoped for himself. But he had chosen otherwise, neither wisely nor well, and had difficulties accepting the consequences of those choices as his own handiwork.

I tried to remind him as gently as a keyboard allows that being an adult means owning the consequences of your own choices-all that you chose and all that you chose NOT to choose. As the typing went on, I realized whatever had brought him back to visit would not keep him too much longer. As I said, we were the same, and yet we were different, perhaps because we had assumed we would somehow be constants, though nothing in this life remains as it is.

I hesitated as I bade him 'all the best' knowing he would no longer recognize that if he were to see it and would certainly no longer pursue it for himself. The waters now were deeper than 'back in the day' and the current more powerful and purposeful. Or perhaps just our resolve to resist it had weakened just so.We were farther from shore than we realized and no longer had the time or strength to return.
-bill kenny