Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement, hit me hard. A beautifully written, twisting story, it brought up so many of my own emotions and experiences around variations on truth. The London setting felt like I was walking back to two years past when my life was dramatically unfolding both within and beyond my own doing.
Thinking about and imagining the future are difficult, I find. My life is so much about living in the present. Perhaps I am often too impacted by the past, the same scenarios replayed, each time attempting to uncover new meanings, new truths.
The future plans I have are a based on client projects and class schedules, evenly divided into odd eleven-week quarters. Every day brings new opportunity with seemingly little design. How can a strategic planner base so much on chance? And yet, all these ventures propel me forward in a satisfying trajectory towards...only reflection will provide the packaging.
It is not that I believe in manifest destiny, more that I avoid repetition and crave the new. Or, is it that I prefer not to be responsible for my own next steps? Let me be blown by the wind, blown by the wind.
At 41, single, strong and perhaps beautiful, I am at a crossroads amongst my peers, so many of whom have partners, families, cars, houses, and jobs. My freedom is mysterious to them and to me as well. Shouldn't I too be tied into these safe trappings? Am I a danger to the status quo out here on my own?
Yet, I have made a choice, forging my own version of the truth, and am instead independent from those paths and free to invent each day anew. There are few role models for this exploration.
In social settings I am the mysterious woman who is difficult to introduce, who can not easily be labeled. Yet, amongst my dear friends who search for my heart, the discovery is savored - there is no truth for which I need atone.
