“Young fool... Only now, at the end, do you understand...”

I talked to Tom today. He was leaving in an hour for China. Leaving his life of teaching in Japan, ending one chapter and beginning another. It reminded me of when I left Hong Kong. And when I left the dorms after my freshman year, and when I graduated from high school and when…ok I guess it reminded me of a lot of things. It reminded me of all the times I had watched an era in my life come to a close.

I still remember the last night I spent in our house in California. It was the August before I started 5th grade. Colin and I slept in bunk beds in the first room on the left at the end of the hall way opposite the top of the stairs. I remember laying there and thinking. This is the last time I will be sleeping here in MY bed. I had spent the last 5 years in the same room. From Kindergarten until that moment, nearly half my life, this had been my room, my sanctuary. And in a week, it would be someone else’s. I was sad and scared about going to a new school, making new friends, and living in a new house. And yet these things also intrigued me.

This same scenario would be played out again and again in my life. I felt similar “sadness” to watch all of my freshman buddies go our separate ways, making promises to keep in touch and eventual rendezvouses, but knowing the “good times” were now gone. Looking out the window of the airplane over Hong Kong, giving mental waves and head nods to the skyline, locales, and people below. Waving to him as he walks through the doors of the MTC and onto Kentucky; hugging him one last time before Brazil; putting my arm around his shoulders the last time he will be shorter than me. Sitting on the front steps of Plymouth 1, just talking. Thinking, “This was a great chapter, this was a great era.”

“All right, let's see..."It was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times?" You stupid monkey.”

I have so many chapters in the story of my life, and so many yet to come. But that never seems to make it any less difficult to finish the last line and turn the page. Sure great things lay in wait on the pages that follow. But the potential of the future is sure hard pressed to trump the joys of the past and present. The past is certain and finite; the future is not. And perhaps that’s the only time we really notice, when things are good. When things are bad, the transition is seamless and with a sigh of relief. “Anything is better than this.” But I find myself with many more good chapters than bad. And I don’t think it’s bad to mourn the passing, it’s how we cope, its how we adapt.

“Yeah but it's easier for plants. I mean they have no memory. They just move on to whatever's next. With a person though, adapting’s almost shameful. It's like running away.”

I suppose that life is not so compartmentalized after all. Like any good book, the chapters build on themselves and through the course of the work you watch the characters grow and develop. Without the division of chapters, there is no structure, no framework. And with out chapters in life, you don’t grow or progress. You languish and stagnate, you plateau. I suppose it’s just a bit difficult to step out of the comforting warmth of the present to the cold chill of the future. Like getting out of my bed and putting on my cold jeans on a winter morning in Utah. I dread it, but I acclimate and before long I forget about the warmth of my bed. I may even try to go back to it after class or come back from work. But it’s not the same, when its time to move on, you must move on. And you can never come back. And in the words of Metallica, it’s “sad but true.” You can never go home again. I mean…I mean you can go home, physically, like to visit for thanksgiving and for family reunions, unless its just to expensive. I guess the meaning of it is more metaphorical, as in you can not go back in time and relive the events and adventures of your youth because once you grow up and leave your home, then…oh never mind.

And so ends another era of my life, the close of another chapter. I found out that I have a roommate moving in. Actually, two. They came by and are moving in this weekend. I don’t think I like them. Or maybe I just don’t want to change.

I guess I never do