“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just … come out the other side.”
? Stephen King, The Stand
I’m starting to recognize that statement as true. Each of us have a growth path and each of us go through it in the way we are meant to and through the trials we are meant to face. Perhaps this is merely the professor in me trying to connect reality to Campbell’s hero’s journey, but it fits. It fits nicely.
I’m listening to the Stand for the first time since I was a kid peering out an 8th story window on 135th and trying to imagine how different the world out there was from the world on the pages of the book. Not too much, really. Even now the world that King’s characters leave behind feels like our own in part. There is a timelessness to America that feels like shuffling the same deck of cards over and again and expecting a new suit.
But this is about growth.
I’ve grown and stumbled and grown again only to realize that I too am the deck of cards shuffled and reshuffled, but also to realize that you can make a lot out of those cards. You can live a thousand different kinds of lives and never find the right one, or you can get it right the first time and know you are living your perfect life. For me I see glimpses of that life every day. Moments peak through and I think, If I could just hold on to that part of it and this other. If life lines up right then the parts I’ve held on to will matter and I’ll really have something. My life is a game of poker. 5 card draw. I’m not too sure about the wilds.
Some Thoughts:
- Lately I’ve been thinking I need a new coffee. I cannot quite say what I should be using, but the brew has become too much of the same thing and I am ready to explore a different taste.
- Tomorrow I will be writing and grading and putting up post its and tearing them down all in an attempt to convey how much work I’ve been and need to be doing.