We are the stories we tell. The past is just this long narrative that's been shaped by our own feelings. History becomes how we remember it, even if it didn't quite happen that way. Everyone has a story and everyone is a story to someone else. Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if we could experience even a part of someone else's story from their perspective. We may not always be the hero of the tale, but we tend to try and justify why we do something. If we're human then there are plenty of times when we look back and realize just how far off we've gotten. Even the public story we share with others is either a highlight reel or tweaked for mass consumption. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's easy to forget there is more than what's on the surface.
I never thought that I would bring someone to see my childhood home. I had reached a point where it seemed like any person in my life who hadn't been there once already would be too far removed to make the trek up to see it. It's not like you meet people as an adult and then ask them to travel a thousand miles to see where you came from. Instead it just becomes part of the story we tell other people when we meet. Sure there are pictures and that sort of thing but an image of a thing doesn't compare to the feeling of standing in a place. To understand the placement of things and how they fit together. Now when you tell a story about that time in the backyard they can see it more clearly. The story is a bit more complete.
Alaska has always been a been a bit of a pause for me. I know you can't go home again, but this place was always where I came to try and reset back to zero. I'm generally a nostalgic person already because I like my past, even though it's not all rainbows and triumphant musical cues. It's still where I came from and it made me who I am today. So when I come back to this place a part of me is remembering what once was and what it has become since I left. It's strange to think about, but I've lived in other places longer than I ever lived here. I have a new home, but even that home was chosen because of its similarities to my original home. I live where I live now because it's a place that has all the best parts of where I came from and a lot fewer of the negatives. Still we're at the end of this long trip and as per usual the end brings about a bit of an existential crisis. I start to ponder what it all means and if I want to return to reality. Reality where I have my friends around me. Where you go to work on a regular basis and generally behave like a responsible adult doing adult things like paying bills, building things not out of Legos, and telling yourself that you shouldn't get quite so excited about a movie coming out where the main character has the ability to shrink down to the size of an ant in order to fight industrial corruption and the weaponization of science. Reality also means that time is moving again. It always has been, even while sitting in my childhood home, but when I go back that means I'm going to keep getting older and we'll be further and further away from what was. Then again it means we're getting closer and closer to what will be.
This last part of the trip though has a reunion of the past. Facebook is one giant spoiler alert when it comes to our lives today. Thankfully though it means that rather than waiting twenty years to see how someone is doing, I can check their wall and see how their kids are doing or how that barbecue went on Saturday. On the other side there are people I haven't physically been in the same room with since high school who have seen the inside of my house and watched the work we've been doing for the past couple of years. It's a bit comforting to know that my friends and the people from my past are still there in some ways. Still it will be nice to see a bit of the stories of others as not told through funny links and carefully chosen totally candid pictures of life. I know that reunions today aren't anything like they have in movies. It will likely just be a bunch of people with a shared past getting dinner and drinking beer together. I am excited to see who shows up because even with Facebook, there are plenty of people who have lived their lives without it, meaning a person like me, who loves technology, has very little idea what's been happening for them. It's funny how twenty years is a long time and yet the world has felt relatively the same. If I could go back and tell my high school me that the world would be an amazing place, but not for the reason you'd think (sorry the flying cars thing is still not happening), I think my younger self would feel a little let down by the prospect of life being just life. The older me thinks about how reassuring it would be to know that despite all the mistakes and lunacy that things will work out. Sometimes it's going to feel like a giant vat of chaos has been spilled at our feet. In the end though I prefer this life to whatever silly dreams my former self had thought up. Except the one where I learned how to fly. That one is still the best and I'll keep hoping that somehow I remember the trick to flight. Until then we'll have to see what comes next...
