If someone said three years from now...

**This was originally posted in my old blog September 13, 2007. Hence, the inaccurate age compared to now. I don't know. I kinda like it**

This time three years ago I was 24. That seems so young. The saner of you might point out that 27 isn't so old, and you'd be right. It feels older by leaps and bounds, though. There's so much I've done since then. So many stories written as a reporter in Smalltown, USA. So many people I've met between there and here. So many views changed forever.
People say that kids are impressionable and adaptable, and they're lucky because they have no preconceived notions about other people. If a little four year old white boy sees a little four year old black girl across a playground of bigger and smaller kids, he doesn't see sex or race, he sees another little person very much like him. Someone to play with, who probably likes the same things he does.
I feel like I'm more impressionable by the day, and I'm more open minded by the minute. A second childhood? A midlife crisis? I hope not.
Not so long ago I was supposed to get married. Now that I consider it, it was about three years ago. It didn't actually happen (and probably for the best) but it makes me think. Where would I be had I taken the plunge? Still married, with kids, doing the work I'm doing now? At home with the kids, knitting and baking cookies? A hugely successful writer, though unable to have children of my own? Divorced with kids? Without? Some combination of all this stuff?
I don't know. I'll never know. You can't ever see what the bigger picture would be, because without all the elements in place, that picture changes. What kind of painting would Starry Night be if not for that village? If it weren't night? If the sky weren't so clear.
Things change and shift every day. I joke often about the cosmic sense, saying that if you take the broad view, I'm early for work, late for work, done ahead of schedule, running behind, old, young, just born and almost dead all at once. A silly way to look at things, but when time is overwhelming and experience seems almost too vast...it takes the edge off.