Tuesday, September 2, 2008

This is not a life experience

I've been out of the country for a year and three months now, just about, and what people usually call a life experience is beginning to cross over into a life.

I get up in the morning, I review what I have to do in my agenda, I take the subway, and I do my job; sometimes well, sometimes, well, not as well as I should. Like everybody else, I guess. But, as nearly everyone I talk to, here and at home, supposes, I am not living. I'm having a life experience.

And sure, that's probably how I'll characterize it on future resumes. After I apply the exact P.S.I. to that future interviewer's hand (neither dead fish nor former marine) and tell him where I'd been teaching English for so long, I may even smile and affirm his chummy small talk definition with "Yes, yes it was" with a voice as slick as K-Y jelly.

But inside I'll be squirming with a question. When did you stop experiencing life? Is that what I have to do to start living?

1 comment:

LNIngram said...

A really great question, interesting blog post.

To respond: where does it all go from life experiences to experiencing life? For me, it's also tempting to live in the past in the future; the interview, the conversation with my forty-years-in-the-future grandkids, whatever; and that makes this all a life experience. But i think living like that takes away from the now. And if you live 100% in the present, you often hit walls. So ... I guess the trick is to live in motion, appreciate the scenery.

Or something equally zen. Because otherwise, we only find stability when we have kids, we only 'have a life' when we're living for others ...

In any case, nice post. keep writing ...

-LNIngram

http://www.lingram.wordpress.com