Nostalgia
Well, life in Kuwait persists. Recently, I have taken to smoking a cigar every night just to unwind. I think people should smoke more cigars. Not because I love them, but because there the act of smoking them forces you to sit in one place and relax for at least an hour. I never have an hour of clearer thinking than when I sit outside and enjoy a cigar. My mind is free to process your day and you have no where else to be.
Tonight my mind fixed on the last two years. I find it hard to believe that it was two years ago that I moved to Colorado Springs. Despite my hardships over that period of time I do long ever so slightly to return to those years. No place I have ever been has felt so much like home as there. My friends, my place, my church, the city...it almost felt like I was not in the Army if for only small moments. For the first in my life I felt young and "free". Those two years may end up clinging to memory as my "younger days".
The hardest part was coming back over President's Day and realizing that the moment had past. The dinner I shared with my friends in Denver that weekend...I knew would be the last time we would all be together. It was not a sad at all. Instead, the moment was last of a set of shared moments before our separate all diverged. Not the end of a book but instead the closing of a chapter.
I have sworn to return and I still plan on fulfilling that vow, but I know it will be different....very different. I will have a different job. I will make different friends. Obviously, the Bible Study will be different. I may actually have a girlfriend there this time. I will be approaching the big 30 this time. At the same time, there is still much of the world that I want to see. Many days I feel older than my years, yet I still have plenty of wild oats to sow. In many ways I feel like the Army has robbed of my youth, but then at the same time I wonder if I would desire the same adventures had I not experienced my past. Maybe had I not served in the Army I would hunger for the horizon of which I feel so deprived.
The horrible events I have been forced have inevitably shaped. For instance, the day in Iraq when a van opened its doors and exposed the broken bodies of three children, my world changed forever. The pallet of colors that I painted my reality with to that point were immediately and irrevocably bleached; the colors replaced with a new set that is to this day crafting the choices that shape my future.
Are there regrets? Yes. Had I to do it all over again would I do it different? No. Not even one minute? No, there are too many hard lessons that life has taught me so far that I never want to learn again.
With that I continue to careen into the future.
Tonight my mind fixed on the last two years. I find it hard to believe that it was two years ago that I moved to Colorado Springs. Despite my hardships over that period of time I do long ever so slightly to return to those years. No place I have ever been has felt so much like home as there. My friends, my place, my church, the city...it almost felt like I was not in the Army if for only small moments. For the first in my life I felt young and "free". Those two years may end up clinging to memory as my "younger days".
The hardest part was coming back over President's Day and realizing that the moment had past. The dinner I shared with my friends in Denver that weekend...I knew would be the last time we would all be together. It was not a sad at all. Instead, the moment was last of a set of shared moments before our separate all diverged. Not the end of a book but instead the closing of a chapter.
I have sworn to return and I still plan on fulfilling that vow, but I know it will be different....very different. I will have a different job. I will make different friends. Obviously, the Bible Study will be different. I may actually have a girlfriend there this time. I will be approaching the big 30 this time. At the same time, there is still much of the world that I want to see. Many days I feel older than my years, yet I still have plenty of wild oats to sow. In many ways I feel like the Army has robbed of my youth, but then at the same time I wonder if I would desire the same adventures had I not experienced my past. Maybe had I not served in the Army I would hunger for the horizon of which I feel so deprived.
The horrible events I have been forced have inevitably shaped. For instance, the day in Iraq when a van opened its doors and exposed the broken bodies of three children, my world changed forever. The pallet of colors that I painted my reality with to that point were immediately and irrevocably bleached; the colors replaced with a new set that is to this day crafting the choices that shape my future.
Are there regrets? Yes. Had I to do it all over again would I do it different? No. Not even one minute? No, there are too many hard lessons that life has taught me so far that I never want to learn again.
With that I continue to careen into the future.
posted by Lycurgus at 1:08 AM
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