Back in November, some friends took me to Mardis Gras, a strip club just barely inside the perimeter, to celebrate my birthday. A couple of the guys who joined us there were friends with one of my high school friend’s little brother. They hadn’t spent much time with me since high school.
“What the fuck happened to you?” one asked me after I tipped one of the strippers on stage and came back to my seat. He was having trouble believing I wouldn’t say or do something insulting or mean as a matter of course.
My circle of friends when he knew me was ruthless in the verbal abuse we doled out to each other. To get by without taking the brunt of it required a quick wit and an occasional hint of menace. He did not have a quick wit, and as such was frequently on the receiving end of taunts.
I don’t feel like I’m a whole lot different now than I was when he knew me before. Yet it was obvious to him that I am a totally different person now than I was 12 or 13 years ago. He was right. Change can be sneaky like that.
But sometimes change isn’t sneaky. I’m now married, own a home, and am planning to be a dad in the not-too-distant future. I was none of those things as recently as 2008. And now going into 2010 I’m perfectly content to be all those things.
So it’s been a unique year, in that some fundamental life changes have happened more suddenly than I’ve been accustomed to. I haven’t spent a whole lot of time reflecting on them, as I’ve been content to just enjoy the ride.
I feel fortunate the year treated me so well when it hasn’t been kind to many of my friends and acquaintances.
And I’m grateful for the people in my life I can rely on to do what they say they’re going to do. This would all be a lot harder without them.
Well, I think, not exactly. Like I was saying on my blog recently, I have always been bugged by the aphorism, “People change.” I think it’s simplistic and inaccurate. I think it’s not so much that people fundamentally change, but just that different aspects of who they are become more or less pronounced at certain points in their life. They’ve always had all those pieces, but most people see only a fraction of the whole, and so will assume that a shift in focus is a “change” of the entire person.
To some people this might seem like a minor, semantic difference, but to me it seems like a distinction significant enough to note.
January 3rd, 2010 at 12:55 amI think it’s a minor semantic difference. Shift in focus or change or whatever, the ultimate result is a person’s priorities are grossly different over time, and that’s more than just a small facet people notice from the outside.
January 3rd, 2010 at 1:08 amLet me be the proverbial (or literal) old fart by quoting Bob Dylan~ He not busy being born is busy dying. If people dont grow or change what the hell is the point of life???
Take care, Pops.
January 3rd, 2010 at 6:42 am