| | had an argument with my best friend chris once about the nature of change. he was, and still is, an avid believer that you should alway be striving to improve yourself. for that reason, he ran triathlons, salsa-danced, and learned to cook a mean pesto chicken. and even personality-wise, he'd become much more social, made friends with a ton of girls, and exuded a confident charisma that i knew i could never achieve, and envied. he had seemingly come a long ways from the computer-obsessed former fattie who relished ripping off gullible Magic players for all their rare cards that i knew in high school.
i, on the other hand, argued that any self-initiated and self-perpetuated change was unnatural. let things take their course, i said, for that was the only way you could be true to yourself. any forced alteration against my body and spirit's willingness would be a subversion of the natural order, and would never truly succeed anyway. i thought the whole notion of improving yourself was just a way of saying that you don't like the person you already are.
that was about four years ago. now, i think that the whole argument was fairly pointless. we were both right in our own ways, but just didn't realize it back then. for the fact of the matter is, self-improvement is natural. i want to become a better basketball player. i want to be able to run all the way around the southern tip of Manhattan island and see the Statue of Liberty, instead of stopping gaspingly out of breath near the Village. i want to break hit double digits in a round of golf. i want to be able to play Stairway to Heaven on the guitar. i want to be able to speak honestly, clearly, without stuttering or leaving things unsaid. those wishes are a part of who i am and who i strive to be. it doesn't necessarily mean that i need to work furiously and blindly to get there, but only that they are a reason for me to look forward to three-day weekends like this one.
and speaking of change, i found myself thinking recently that my ex-girlfriend meg had changed quite a lot since we broke up. i haven't seen or spoken to her almost two years, but we converse fairly regularly over e-mail, the gist of which mainly consists of her telling me about the boy drama in her life and how cute allen iverson is, and me bitching about work and my golf scores. anyway, she offered some words of consolation after what i thought was a budding relationship had abruptly ended.
to paraphrase, she essentially said that, as we grow older, we carry more and more baggage from past relationships into new ones. in an effort to Learn Something from past mistakes and not commit them again, we overcompensate and commit new ones, perpetuating the cycle of baggage accumulation.
i realized she was completely, utterly right. in an effort to compensate for my prior laissez-faire and detached attitude toward dating, i pushed, probably too hard in the post-morterm analysis. and the girl? suffice it to say that i think the baggage analogy applied as well.
but the point is i was struck by how much the meg offering these wise words differed from the meg i thought i knew back in college. she was the girl that my friends all hated. she was two years younger and from a different culture, had completely different friends. the relationship started and ended based mainly on physical attraction and sexual chemistry.
had she really matured in the past few years, become older and wiser? or had those qualities always been there, and i had just overlooked them, realizing now only because i am the one that has changed, having become more introspective and philosophical? honestly, i suspect more of the latter. if only because i remember her asking me once, how come we never talk about our feelings and aspirations like i do with my friends? and i made some joke out of it, changed the subject and pulled her to bed.
to be honest, i wish i could have dinner with her someday. nothing more, just dinner at a nice italian restaurant with great lasagna and smooth jazz. we would just talk for hours and hours, share nostalgic memories and new experiences. i feel like meg's a person that i know perhaps 50% of very well, and the other half not at all. perhaps she would say the same for me as well.
Currently Drinking:
Molson XXX (7.3% alcohol! that alone makes up for the fact that it tastes like vomit)
Currently Smoking:
Marlboro Lights (yep, i'm addicted)
Currently Wearing:
shirt, DKNY, $10 (bluefly.com)
jeans, Club Monaco, $35 (woodbury commons outlet) |
