Saturday, August 05, 2006

Our Endless Numbered Days


Thanks to Iron & Wine for the post title.

After studying my pants off since January 18th, I'm finally finished my classes for teachers college at NU. Beyond this, there's just the matter of a huge exam, some seminars, and student teaching. It is strange though to reflect on the last several months. I have grown accustomed to living half my life in Lewiston, with the group of people you see pictured above. I'll still see all them (I hope) but never all on a daily basis like this again.

It's strange, because I think we develop an illusion of permanence. That is, in order to get through life, we willingly set aside the fact that our lives are ephemeral. I had the schedule from the beginning, I knew that class would end in the beginning of August. And yet, here I am a little shocked that it's all over. There were times when it felt like this program would never end, and now - at least as far as classes go - it is at an end.

When I think about this I wonder how much this is a microcosm of life as a whole. We pass through often not really entertaining the notion that we are finite. Maybe here and there an event will shock us into remembering that fact, but most of the time our time seems endless. And yet it is not.

Since the beginning of the year, my life has been stretched over the length of the QEW it seems, with two poles, one in Lewiston and one in Toronto. It seems to have shrunk back all of a sudden. It seems smaller now.

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