It might not be apparent in looking at me now, but I used to know exactly what was going on. Why, I remember being 18 years old and being absolutely convinced that, for instance, not only would I never gain weight, but I would never ever have bad breath, stretch marks, or cellulite.
I would never spank a child.
I would never be caught up in the work-bill-work-bill cycle.
I would never know – personally or Biblically – a Republican.
Since then, of course, I’ve gone to do/be/do/be/do, in the words of Frank Sinatra, all of those things.
I’m not ashamed. I’ll do it again! What are you looking at?! You don’t know me!!
Or maybe you do. Because I suspect that I am – gasp! – quite commonplace in some of these confessions…
For example: Love. Oh, you shoulda asked me about it years and years ago. I knew all about love! I knew so much I could yammer on about it for absolute hours!
And now?
Now I’m aware of how very many variations of love there are.
And not just the physical variations that would have been at the front and center in my youth. (Please see earlier post on my dirty mind. Thank you.)
And how about my recent bout with technical inflammation? You know, the one where my computer starts making ridiculous demands (Disable my cookies! Reboot me! Let me show you how to get discount pharmaceuticals delivered to your door in a plain brown wrapper!) and eventually slows to a pace designed to make me think of taking up subsistence farming and checking into all this fuss I’ve been hearing about the Mennonites…
They’ll have a place for me, won’t they?
It’s funny. In a stretch of unpaved reality just north of the Mobius strip, I’ve come to realize the more I know, the less I understand, and the more I understand, the less I know.
It’s making me dizzy, just thinking about what I thought I knew, what I used to know, and what I don’t know yet...
And so I’ll stop.
If at 40 I realized how ridiculous I was at 30, what do you suppose I will realize at 50?
Maybe it's best I wait on the speculation there.
I'm still pretty sure I know what's going on.