The Space Between

I am having an existential crisis. It started when I returned to Calgary after 6 months in Mexico, finding everything familiar yet nothing the same. This coming back, albeit temporary, was always part of the plan. We are here for the summer to get our affairs in order, tidy up a few loose ends, do one last final purge of the myriad of storage lockers that hold the remnants of our life.

What I didn’t anticipate was the crisis that crept up on me like those 5 pounds over winter. I thought I was doing well, navigating these semi-retired waters with grace and ease. I smiled indulgently at the shared wisdom of those who had gone before, all the while believing my own experience would be different. I would NOT feel like a tiny bird cast out of the nest, disoriented and afraid, predators all around, unable to alter my circumstance because I don’t yet know how to fly.

Oh wait a minute. That’s exactly how I feel. I am by all accounts ‘living the dream’, and yet I do not know what that means. I am stuck in the space between what I can see, both past and present, and what I hope for.

The Space Between is a literal and spiritual point in time, and my blog over the next few months. Unlike ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’, where the protagonist actually FINDS the answer to the meaning of life*, I anticipate it’ll be a little more complicated than that for me. Not that I’m in search of the meaning of life, but I am in search of what life means to me. Mostly I plan to observe others, ask annoying questions, write about what I see, and hope that I learn to fly before that cat gets me.