Tonight I lie back in the living room after a homemade steak, which was followed by some sweet plantains and a warm bowl of arroz con leche. It’s almost like I treated myself out to dinner, but at home.
Maybe a whole person’s life is about learning to live with themselves. In my twenties, I’m learning to see the world as a place to grow my skills for challenges that are also growing with my age.
The world is aging, too, after all. And while idling by to observe it is its own pleasure, I’m now diving into the world again to see just how much more I can uncover.
This isn’t always graceful. In fact, the path to one’s better self is filled with forgotten truisms and hasty correction after one’s mistakes. Sometimes at the end of the day, the only grace to be claimed is the finality of it all, no matter what the outcome.
In a city like L.A., few things make this as clear as the sight of a car on the road whose driver is obviously in a panic, dashing from one lane to the next in a desperate effort to get ahead, until finally they cut through a slit that’s just barely tolerable as an opening, though not without nearly losing the life they want to get to and placing another’s in danger.
But the world is rushing by and we need to get to it, don’t we? Isn’t that what we mean by ceasing the day? Plus, in the current environment of things, just what is patience? As in, how much is legally required?
But of course we can only rush so much before crashing into one another.
When a great trial through the world is all said and done, the only parts which we remember are the ones we choose to etch into memory.
Tonight I choose to remember my first homemade steak after another whirlwind of a week. It wasn’t bad at all, and yet I’m only just getting started with my dinner game.
I also choose to remember any other driver out there whose life was ever endangered in the making of these Times. We are still in this together, and I’ve got much to learn from you all.
J.T.