For reasons that are not clear to me, I suddenly began to ponder what life might be like ten years from now. I'll be a little less than 25% older, and if my life cycle projections are correct for folks in my general cohort, I'll be a little less than 45% through my expected lifespan. One of the things that thinking about the possibility ten years from now has driven home in the last several minutes is just how young I might actually be right now. That's a good thing from my perspective because the numbers quoted above, admitting that some of them relate to some less than conservative but still possible assumptions, don't lie.
I've always felt like a bit of an old soul. When I was younger, I more to adults than I ever did to folks of my vintage. That's a pretty good way to get good grades in school, but it's not necessarily a recipe for fitting in with your peers. Things shifted in college and even more once I entered the working world. That older soul outlook became more valued.
One of the downsides of that outlook is that recently, I've been feeling a little older than I actually am based on the calendar. Some of that is what I've experienced. Again, that's mostly good, but not everything about that experience has been all rainbows and unicorns.
All that aside, it was good to feel younger. Projecting anything farther out for me than a day or two and basing my expectations of outcomes on those projections has proven a difficult path in the past, but today I'm going to let my imagination run rampant a little. Ten years from now could mean that I'll have walked between 30,000 and 40,000 miles. I suspect the best I could hope for would really be the low end of that figure, and there would have to be quite a few things break my way for that to become reality, but 30k miles is within the realm of the possible. That's just little over once around the earth at the equator. Actually, it's about two years of walking beyond once around the earth at the equator.
That also sounds like a vast distance, and even given my efforts over almost the last year is difficult for me to imagine. When I started this practice of walking, I had so many preconceived notions about how it would be and what I would think that proved to be totally incorrect. I'm still learning things about myself and my environment that I never anticipated. Some of it has been more difficult that I imagined it would, and some of it has been far easier than my anxious projections anticipated.
I do know that another ten years, should I be blessed enough to experience them is a little over 3,600 more of these possibilities.
Once again, the picture is an inadequate substitute for the actual experience, but the thought of the possibility of seeing something like this over three thousand times more in the next decade is a fantasy worth contemplating. I'll keep trying to put myself in the way of beauty, and I hope that I get the chance that my imagination has laid out before me.
I've always felt like a bit of an old soul. When I was younger, I more to adults than I ever did to folks of my vintage. That's a pretty good way to get good grades in school, but it's not necessarily a recipe for fitting in with your peers. Things shifted in college and even more once I entered the working world. That older soul outlook became more valued.
One of the downsides of that outlook is that recently, I've been feeling a little older than I actually am based on the calendar. Some of that is what I've experienced. Again, that's mostly good, but not everything about that experience has been all rainbows and unicorns.
All that aside, it was good to feel younger. Projecting anything farther out for me than a day or two and basing my expectations of outcomes on those projections has proven a difficult path in the past, but today I'm going to let my imagination run rampant a little. Ten years from now could mean that I'll have walked between 30,000 and 40,000 miles. I suspect the best I could hope for would really be the low end of that figure, and there would have to be quite a few things break my way for that to become reality, but 30k miles is within the realm of the possible. That's just little over once around the earth at the equator. Actually, it's about two years of walking beyond once around the earth at the equator.
That also sounds like a vast distance, and even given my efforts over almost the last year is difficult for me to imagine. When I started this practice of walking, I had so many preconceived notions about how it would be and what I would think that proved to be totally incorrect. I'm still learning things about myself and my environment that I never anticipated. Some of it has been more difficult that I imagined it would, and some of it has been far easier than my anxious projections anticipated.
I do know that another ten years, should I be blessed enough to experience them is a little over 3,600 more of these possibilities.
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| Sunrise over the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress |
Once again, the picture is an inadequate substitute for the actual experience, but the thought of the possibility of seeing something like this over three thousand times more in the next decade is a fantasy worth contemplating. I'll keep trying to put myself in the way of beauty, and I hope that I get the chance that my imagination has laid out before me.
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