I went to The Boat a few nights ago with friends I knew for awhile and some people I met recently. Flailing my arms, jumping up and down like an idiot to the ironic thumpings of 70's pop, I had a really really good time. I was 23 again.
Actually, better than when I was at 23. At 23, I was too self-conscious to dance like that with all those people. I was more withdrawn. I felt like, on the dance floor, the 23 year old I should've been. More care-free. Enjoying being young and feeling good about an unknown future.
23 was probably the worst year of my life -- in a lifetime filled with many bad years. They just never seemed to me to bad. Bad is not what happens to you: it is when you are within that state of mind where you look at your surroundings and you tell yourself that it was bad.
And it was bad at 23.
I was living by myself in the graduate student ghetto of Kingston. I hated everyone around me: my friends, my peers, my family, my teachers. People who might care. It was a self-made misery.
23 is too young of an age to be unhappy with life. I spent the next four years in upheavel. Changing places, jobs, friends, but never changing that state of mind of being miserable. Wasted youth.
I am 27 now. Life has not changed. I am still in the same place, really. But my outlook has changed. The world seems to be giving and giving to me now. It probably always have been giving and giving. I just wasn't paying attention.
And really, what is place if not a mental representation of ourselves over our physical surroundings? A plateau can be flat rolling plains or the height of the world.
I am appreciative of the joy people I know and people I am meeting have shared with me.
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