... I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around – nobody big, I mean- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.
J D Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
November really has pounced on me, in another ten days, or so, I'm trying my best to veer away from a countdown, I'll be twenty five years old. I don't usually make a big deal out of the years stacking up against me, the difference is often so negligible I blissfully ignore it. I keep saying a person is only as old as they think they are. I don't feel old, but a whole twenty five years is overwhelming, I feel unworthy.
A child is born to the world every minute but my own world feels like a giant tote bag tilted precariously on its head by a rummaging old woman searching for an elusive amex card. I have more friends but fighting for space in the crowd feels lonelier. I read less but I profess to know more. I have so much to be grateful for but I want more. I concur with Bertrand Russell in that, 'To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness', but I haven't had the epiphany to sit comfortably and contentedly with my present set of sullied circumstances and smile through it which is a direct contradiction to everything I've been telling myself these past months.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life,
Is bound in shallows and in miseries;
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current as it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Brutus in Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare
