Sorting from the perfect distance

I have been thinking.

Yes, I know, that is something that is generally recommended. I do try to do it on occasion, and on this occasion, the theme of the thoughts for the past few days has been choices I have made. And how those choices aren’t what I always necessarily want at the moment. And how incredibly confusing that can be.

A friend asked me what was it that I wanted in ten years time, because now was too close to look at. I thought about it for a moment and then I told him that I want a family and I want to do good. Those are simple desires, and looking at things from a distance, it is easier to see and to categorize each action into two boxes—the ones that will lead to these desires (because here I also see the outcomes) and the ones to be discarded because they lead away. I’ve made a decision about what I want, and I’ve made a decision the way that I want to get there.

And you end up where you wanted to go.

It is so simple.

And then I pull in closer, closer, until the scene is incredibly close, looking into eyes with long dark lashes and feeling the warmth of skin. All I can see are the details and all I can feel are the individual moments. Isn’t this life? Isn’t it really just full of these moments put together that build something unexpected? It is a touch and a sense and a silly grin that crosses your lips. And again, it is simple. There are the good feelings and the bad ones, the pleasing things and the unpleasant ones. I can look at the details and again bring out cardboard boxes and place things into them accordingly.

And you end up living the beautiful, pleasing moments.

It is so simple.

It seems so simple.

BUT. I pull back from the details, but not far enough to see the whole scene. I can see out the door and down the stairs, I can see that the sky is cloudy and threatening to rain, so I ought to remember an umbrella. I see that when I step outside the cardboard boxes get wet and mushy, and the bottom falls out, mixing the pleasant and unpleasant and I can’t tell which is which anymore. I look for the boxes down the road and realize that I left the binoculars at home and with the weather I can’t see them.

You are in the middle and it is not so simple.

I stand there in the rain with a soggy mess of pleasant and unpleasant moments and carry them with me until I reach some boxes. There I try to sort them accordingly, matching them to action that lead to the destination I wanted to reach. But in this dream sequence, some of the unpleasant things end up in the good box and the pleasant ones end up in… but I can’t discard them, because now, in the rain, on the corner, I can’t even see the destination of ten years down the road. And my sorting abilities are crap. It’s like when you sort socks after laundry and you roll them into neat little pairs, but when you unroll a pair to put them on you realize that they actually weren’t quite a match, but rather have a different pattern or thickness. How are you to tell that the things you would’ve chosen to discard with the long perspective are really the things worth discarding? How are you to tell that the unpleasant things from the extreme close-up aren’t really the ones that you want?

It is a combination of faith and fear that keeps me at this distance. Fear that if I move further away, I’ll lose sight of simple things that will make me happy. Faith that I won’t lose out on beautiful things because of distance. Fear that if I move closer I won’t want my destination anymore. Faith that with a wider view I’ll know where I am going. It is a constant exercise of moving in closer and pulling further away, living in the moment and looking ten years down the road.

All of this thinking makes me tired. Does it really matter? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I think I am a terrible sorter.