The View from a Drawbridge

“I’m thinking about duality a lot,” said my friend. “More and more often, I am experiencing joy and sadness almost simultaneously.”

Boy oh boy, can I ever relate to that! Now that I’m in Seattle, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. But I’m also lonely, and sometimes that feeling washes over me like a tidal wave. And yet, I’m still here, living this adventure, making some of the best choices I’ve ever made. I think. I hope.

And the happier I get, the more intensely I grieve as well. I’d love to have shared these amazing experiences with Chuck. He would have loved this. All of it. He’d have made it a lot more fun, too. But he’d have also made it pretty impossible. Sometimes his intensity was a little hard to take.

It’s a very strange feeling, experiencing such a complex stew of emotions. You can taste each individual ingredient, and yet they’re all mixed together at the same time. You start to doubt your sanity.

But you also start to feel as if you’ve reached the next level of awareness. Like you’ve evolved. Like you’ve grown. Like you’ve achieved something.

And you suspect that things will only get harder from here. Hopefully, the rewards will be bigger, too.