Half of what I was... but happier...

Recently, a friend whom I know half my life commented that I have changed, that she could see I'm now 'at peace'. Her comment came as a surprised because I never thought I was not 'at peace'. In fact, I had always lived with the view that should I collapse at my laptop the next second, I would have no regrets. She didn't elaborate more and I didn't ask.

Then I read Ms Sui's blog about her reflections on her experience being a short-termed SAHM and her experience. I read it with interest because she sounded like ME more than a decade ago. We both seemed to have lived our life in a reversed cycle.

I had lived my life on the edge, done things I'm both proud and not so proud of. I have climbed mountains and backpacked alone to far-flung places where you had to dig your own shit hole, took some risks and some absolutely stupid chances, took many less travelled routes and hurt far too many people. I have gone to the 'woods', chopped down some trees and chatted with the monkeys. But I was never as happy as I am now.

I think my desire to live life with vengence stemmed from my fear of normality. I was afraid of the mundane, of living the life of average Joe or Jane. I lived with the assumption "there must be more than life than xxx ". Yet, in a very oxy-moronic way, I felt there was nothing else life could give, so I lived with total abandonment. In a way, I think I resembled the character, Tristan (played by Brad Pitt), in Legends of the Fall. I was searching for something but I didn't know what it was.

I'm not sure what changed me. Maybe it was age, maybe it was on that particular night, on the edge of my window when I heard what I thought was God, or maybe it was just having kids. Normality and the mundane no longer scares me. In fact, I kind of enjoy it now. I think I have had enough of the 'been there, done that' that I no longer crave for the unknown. In a way, I am half of what I was and yet fuller than what I was.

Life is Life - there isn't a more or less to it, and there is only NOW. So, I guess you can live your life to the fullest in many ways and the point is to be happy with the present.

If I had to live my life over again, would I? Heck, yeah... with all the scraps and cuts in a heartbeat.