I'm blogging this at 2:30 in the morning in my pajamas, with a glass of hotel mini-bar wine, listening to the I'm Wide Awake Bright Eyes soundtrack and not able to sleep - so this is going to be a very sentimental post. I am marveling that this album was released in 2005. That means I graduated from college 13 years ago. Is that possible? I feel so much older, wiser and more knowledgeable, and yet at the same time I feel like that all was only a few years ago.
I can't listen to these songs without thinking about the younger version of me who was spending idyllic days hanging around with my college friends on one of the most beautiful campuses in the world, and realizing with wonder how much of our lives then consisted of the unknown and the unexplored. Isn't youth the very essence of naivete, idealism and promise, made only possible due to one's inability to grasp the concept that it is all fleeting?
At that point in my life, I had known nothing except my rather lonely childhood growing up in gritty Queens, my not-entirely smooth transition to middle school and high school in the wealthy suburbs of Long Island, and my four years as a student in an incredibly beautiful, privileged and amazing college campus. I had never lived for any extended period of time outside the tri-state area. I knew I loved reading like no other hobby or activity in the world, ever. I had met my first love, and broken up with him also, and was still reeling from all of what that meant.
Since that time, I have lived in Chicago and attended and graduated from law school, lived and worked in Manhattan, fell in love, lived and worked in Hong Kong, gotten engaged, gotten married, purchased a house, had a baby. And during all of that time, I continued to love reading, and traveling.
Fast forward all of this time, and I have a life that I never thought I would be blessed enough to have. I still love reading, and traveling. I have my grandmothers, still alive. I have parents who are healthy, happy, and would do anything for me. I have a brilliant and sweet sister that I love dearly and am so grateful for. I have a supportive husband who loves me and whom I love, who is admittedly *so* different from me in so many ways - and yet miraculously is exactly aligned with me on all of the things that matter. How did we find each other? Two more different but similar people could not have met and fallen in love and decided to forge a life together. And now I have a beautiful, adorable daughter that I love to the ends of the earth, who has shown me in so many ways and without any reservations what it means to be a mother, to delight in the pleasure of taking care of someone, to love rather than be loved.
Through these tough times at work, when I am working more than I think anyone should be working, and when I am missing everyone, it is good to remember this. I am doing my best and all is okay.
I can't listen to these songs without thinking about the younger version of me who was spending idyllic days hanging around with my college friends on one of the most beautiful campuses in the world, and realizing with wonder how much of our lives then consisted of the unknown and the unexplored. Isn't youth the very essence of naivete, idealism and promise, made only possible due to one's inability to grasp the concept that it is all fleeting?
At that point in my life, I had known nothing except my rather lonely childhood growing up in gritty Queens, my not-entirely smooth transition to middle school and high school in the wealthy suburbs of Long Island, and my four years as a student in an incredibly beautiful, privileged and amazing college campus. I had never lived for any extended period of time outside the tri-state area. I knew I loved reading like no other hobby or activity in the world, ever. I had met my first love, and broken up with him also, and was still reeling from all of what that meant.
Since that time, I have lived in Chicago and attended and graduated from law school, lived and worked in Manhattan, fell in love, lived and worked in Hong Kong, gotten engaged, gotten married, purchased a house, had a baby. And during all of that time, I continued to love reading, and traveling.
Fast forward all of this time, and I have a life that I never thought I would be blessed enough to have. I still love reading, and traveling. I have my grandmothers, still alive. I have parents who are healthy, happy, and would do anything for me. I have a brilliant and sweet sister that I love dearly and am so grateful for. I have a supportive husband who loves me and whom I love, who is admittedly *so* different from me in so many ways - and yet miraculously is exactly aligned with me on all of the things that matter. How did we find each other? Two more different but similar people could not have met and fallen in love and decided to forge a life together. And now I have a beautiful, adorable daughter that I love to the ends of the earth, who has shown me in so many ways and without any reservations what it means to be a mother, to delight in the pleasure of taking care of someone, to love rather than be loved.
Through these tough times at work, when I am working more than I think anyone should be working, and when I am missing everyone, it is good to remember this. I am doing my best and all is okay.
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