Contorted Beings, Reaching for Nature

Some days drift by without asking to be noticed, and today was exactly that kind. Training was good, simply one foot in front of the other, time moving past without offering anything more or less than what was actually there.

The real moment came when an old friend returned to school just to say hello. Always lovely to see her. And yet the brief chat we shared left something like loss sitting quietly behind it. I couldn't place why at first, but it makes sense enough now,  two years of a life spent in this one place, and that stretch is starting to close.

I sat on the steps above the training yard afterwards, watching shapes move through the night, caught in flashes of harsh overhead light. A strange thing, sitting alone with that view, the students below twisting themselves into unlikely positions, reaching after something in nature none of us can quite become. I loved the moment for what it was, my mind drifting between that odd, beautiful sight and everything I've lived through here, and everything I haven't.

The plain truth is that these two years have been extraordinary, and none of what I've learned qualifies me for anything in particular. I'm at peace with that. I've loved the challenges this place kept placing in front of me, and I've learned, slowly, to welcome the change that always seems to ride behind them.

I've made friends here who'll stay somewhere in me for good, and I'll miss them, and this whole way of living, once it ends, which is arriving faster than I'd like to admit. Life is about to shift again, and once again, I don't know if I'm ready. I suspect that thought travels with most people who choose a path like this one. I'm neither unusual nor special in feeling it. Change remains the only thing that never changes.

I miss people. I feel it most days. But I miss them carrying real gratitude too — for having had even the briefest window to share something real with them.

Life feels large right now, even though the moments that brought the most joy tend to leave the deepest holes behind them.

I've always said all I really want is to experience the whole of being human, the good, the difficult, the parts that are simply neither. And sitting on these steps tonight, watching shapes move through their own small corner of time, I'm fairly certain I'm getting exactly what I asked for.