Things my momma told me:
You can’t hurry love
There’d be days like this
You better shop around
Not to come

My eyes misted over and a flash came over me that love was supernatural. It was unexpected as I hadn’t felt a similar emotion for well over a decade, when I was religiously devout. For a long time, my thoughts and beliefs have been relegated to what I can physically sense, or at least imagine. As far as commonly held beliefs in the supernatural, I can’t help but dismiss those ideas I see as contrived for comfort the individual or the masses. But love, romantic love, struck me momentarily as insanity, something so energy-intensive, resource-sapping, and so often thankless in every sense, that it could never evolve. So, it came from somewhere else. Then the elevator stopped and I finished my laundry.

When I was at St. Olaf, I tried to keep in touch with a small number of friends with whom I’d become close either during high school or shortly after. On a trip to the College of St. Benedict’s, I took a morning walk with a friend of mine around the lake just behind the Chapel at St. John’s. The alcohol from the night before had clobbered my brain into an oozing mass of sentimentality and self-pity. Keeping me awake was the crisp air and placid lake reflecting a cloudless morning sky. We strolled down a thin dirt path strewn with yellow and orange leaves, a chilly breeze slowly taking the edge off my hangover. In the presence of a comfortable friendship and familiar surroundings, I realized something, or at least found the words to express it.

“I feel like I am, and have been, in a continuous state of flux. For a long time.”

I’ve thought about that comment of mine on and off over the past 6 years, and recently I noticed that now it has a very different meaning for me. At the time I uttered it, I felt weighed down by the pressures of school, imagined or otherwise, and was beginning to lift my head above what I perceive(d) as the fog of religion. My sexuality was in question, and my chronic depression would switch from one “cause” to another every 6 months. I had heard of my age being one of transition, when we gained a better appreciation of who we were and where we were going. I felt this hackneyed, coming-of-age angst acutely and somewhat painfully.

What’s caused me to change my view of this situation is that the flux never slowed down. I constantly scrutinize, gauge and judge my decisions in light of my current worldview, itself shifting regularly. One result of this is that I never take my conclusions about life, about anything, very seriously, knowing that some not-so-distant insight will veer my opinion in a different direction. Actually, I don’t take anyone’s conclusions very seriously, knowing that whoever’s it is probably isn’t much smarter than me, and that proponents of most ideas and ideals aren’t exactly looking for holes in their own arguments. I guess the difference now is that I dig being in flux as I think it’s more reflective of reality. Friend likes my flux, too. I dig that.