Adulthood

I think of part of the joy of adulthood as finding those who calibrate at and around the same wavelengths at which you like to live your life. A line that I remind myself of, again and again, year after year, joy after disappointment, lifetimes after moments:

"No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path."

Buddha

It reminds me in a way of how much responsibility and freedom I have (and I would like to leave the debate of how much of our free will is really ours for another day). I try to use it as a nudge, when I find myself wobbling a little, that as much of me belongs to people and life around me, there is a core, that is mine. It is that core that in some ways defines, that helps me find contentment and happiness, that knows that nothing is permanent, that the joy and sadness of life is that it is transient. It brings home the fact that I have everything I need, and want is a tough customer, and an unpleasant guest. It is the core that soaks up all the love I get, not to save it for a bleak day, but to build a foundation of a memory that will be hard to suppress, as the waves of time come and go.

(I realize how sentimental this sounds and in my defense, life has recently involved what I can only call some unpeeling of my tough exterior :-))