Today I'm remembering being someone else. I'm remembering being 20-something, living in Pittsburgh and having a particular set of friends whose company inspired a certain ease I haven't ever been able to replicate exactly.
For some reason the memory of a late winter's day is with me. The Postal Service had just released Give Up and Paul Fittipaldi had a tiny record with some magical, hidden track on it. Tara, Paul, Jadyn, and I were together in Paul's quirky apartment in Squirrel Hill. It was cold and wet outside and in this memory I can't be sure if it was night or day, but things are different that way in Pittsburgh. Because you spend more time inside, you aren't ever as wholly aware of what time of day it is, especially considering that gray skies are practically a constant and especially in terms of memories. The four of us played that record over and over again, dancing in his kitchen, laughing, maybe drinking espresso or bourbon or both. We weren't drinking a lot of anything. But we were dancing. And time didn't matter, and goals or aspirations were spoken in a language we hadn't yet learned, and worry was something that we might have had a fling with and didn't believe we'd meet again. It was fun and it felt safe and it felt permanent enough to not think about too much.
When memories like this visit me, I am reminded of the absolute impermanence in life. That even who we are to ourselves will change without us noticing. I am reminded that people will always enter and leave our lives, oftentimes also without us noticing the exact moment.
So why would our hearts ache, if we know this is true? And we do. Everything we know in this moment will become something else inevitably.
I was thinking about the inevitable. The chance involved in finding moments of grace and love. The loss that is the shadow walking in step with joy. The varying weights of the commitments we carry. The burden of the ownership of our choices. And I thought about parking tickets, too. I was thinking about how they always surprise us, and annoy us, and come in bunches, and how we never really understand why they're happening to us, even when the streets are clearly marked or the rules are well documented. I was thinking about heartache and how it's the same in those ways and how we often ignore signs anyway or misread them at least. You know, it's hard to park in a big city full of people. And sometimes a girl just wants to get home (or someplace that feels like it).
Yes, parking tickets and heartache are inevitable. That's where I'm going with this. I can't imagine I'll remember the parking tickets of my life, even though there is something painful about the expense of poor decisions that leaves a mark no matter how small the infraction.
And being 20-something in Pittsburgh, I'm not sure where that ties in. Maybe I don't have to know right now. Maybe it was before I noticed parking tickets and before heartache impetuously cut a tender spot into a permanent scar that I habitually reach to touch with my fingertips to remind myself of my own vulnerability and significant lack of wisdom in the world of love.
But I sold my car. So that's one less thing to worry about and there's a lot of peace in that. It's an incredible experience to recondition my response to the sound of a street cleaner. But heartache happens alone or with another person. There's nothing I can sell or give up in order to be safe from that. So, perhaps the wisdom is in reading the signs more closely, or taking a little extra time to find a suitable spot even though a warm bed beckons. And the wisdom is also in paying the ticket right away, owning the mistake, and forgiving myself and especially the meter maid.
I want to snuff out the flame of believing that anyone means harm and instead build a strong and constant willingness to believe that we all want to love and be loved, and that we simply falter in our expression. And in relationships when we ignore the signs and then the tickets and the penalties begin to add up and resentment sits at the foot of our bed and reminds us upon waking and before our night's rest and all the moments of restlessness in between that we aren't doing a good job, well, it makes it hard to even get back to a zero balance.
I'm thinking I could go on forever with this analogy.
I'm thinking that the next time someone tells me that they received a parking ticket, I'm going to hug them and tell them I'm sorry, and maybe that small gesture will pay into any deficit in their heart and, maybe that's the best I can come up with in this moment and hopefully for someone it will be worth something.
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