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    Does the World Grow Larger or Smaller?

    Filed Under questions 

    The question on my mind today is this: can I expect my personal world to grow larger or smaller? Of course, when we’re small children those things that occupy our thoughts are limited in scope. The first I recall having any significant thoughts about people who were neither characters in media/books nor folks I had some interactions with, I was eight years old and in the third grade. As I aged, naturally my thoughts progressed further to imagine, examine, inquire into, and feel empathy towards many sorts of things beyond the tiny radius of my even tinier existence.

    Over the years I’ve heard the occasional adult - much older than me in every case - remark that they purposefully restricted both their number of friends and their sources of information. To them it seemed that being young meant exploring options and going out into the world, and getting older meant having made most of one’s choices and coming home to live with them.

    What I’m wondering today is whether this will happen to me? Is it inevitable that I stop seeking and searching after a point, or is that, too, a choice?

    What does this mean for my life? Will I stop the effort of trying to make new friends just for the sake of having them, or on the hope that they’ll bring something new and necessary to my existence? Is this why, for example, the young adult group doesn’t interest me so much anymore - I have made my friends, and established my life (to some degree), and it just takes so much energy to always be meeting new people, and adjusting myself to them, and trying to make them feel good about themselves? Is this why the blogosphere, with its 100 million voices and ten times as many conversations, doesn’t entice me so much as sitting with my eyes closed in my bedroom, with the shades half drawn on a hot day, listening to the chipmunks counsel each other in my yard?

    Something is happening to me. Things that used to interest me don’t. I want less of so many things and more of just a few others, and it doesn’t matter too much to me what anyone thinks. Not too much.

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    2 Responses to “Does the World Grow Larger or Smaller?”

    1. Wally Nut on August 30th, 2006 7:32 pm

      What I have noticed (I’m 55)is that I have very little interest in “things” especially anything that one might “save” or “collect.” What is the point? Pretty soon someone will just have to get rid of it for me. (”Pretty soon” is of course relative, but even if it is 45 years, that’s not that long any more.) My dad in his last year of life was fond of saying that he no longer buys green bananas, then he would laugh at his own joke. I will still buy green bananas, but the stuff I am interested in buying are things to use, tools, that I know will be used now, and later discarded or given away. I still love meeting people but I think I have fewer or perhaps more realistic expectations. All these folks in my life will pass on, or I will beat them to it. Either way, all relationships are transitional. Oh, and I guess I love myself more and therefore take care of myself much better these days.

    2. The Happy Feminist on September 17th, 2006 10:08 am

      Happy birthday!

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