Back in the Day

My afternoon started off innocently enough. I started doing a few things online, then after a while found my way over to some streaming audio. While there, I listened to some mid/late 90s rock songs and had some memories associated with those songs pop into my head for the first time in years. I smiled at some, laughed at one, cringed at another, and eventually became overwhelmed by nostalgia.

For the most part, I am not a nostalgic person. I learned a long time ago to accept that the past is in the past, and there's nothing I can do to go back and change it or even relive it. I will often revisit things in my memory, the good, the bad, AND the ugly, and crack a silly little crooked smile thinking about whatever it was that I/we had done. It's nice to look back on your life events and get a smile or two.

Often my thoughts about the past revolve around people or pets who aren't around anymore. Whether they have died or just moved far enough away to seem dead or just someone that I grew apart from. This time, that didn't apply at all. I was nostalgic for a feeling. I didn't feel young yesterday, and missed what it felt like to be in my late teens or early twenties.

It's a very important time in anyone's development, because of just how many life lessons you learn in those few years. I mean, most of the time before that is spent focusing on how to get you there, but not on what to do once you get there. You have tons of questions, and a bunch of friends who don't know the answers either to help you explore those questions, and maybe even some of the answers too.

Thinking about it though, I'm not sure that I would choose to go back to that time now even if I could. I know there are quite a few things that I would do differently, and my life would be drastically different than it is today. There would be a few improvements I am sure, but who knows how that would effect the people (or pets) currently in my life? What makes my life worth living is the people around me and my dogs. I'd never get over making a decision differently if the consequence meant someone important to me would drift away.

Things in life, at least so far for me, seem to happen in a strange way, and often at times I least expect. You never know what life is going to throw at you, and what that will, in turn, lead you to. A long, strange, set events that were both very sad and expensive eventually led to Guinness coming into my life. While the months before the day I met Guinness, only a handful of hours before he was to be put to sleep, were pure mental anguish, the years that followed have been enhanced by his presence in a way that very few people could ever know or understand. I rescued him from the gas chamber, and my boy has been rescuing me on a daily basis ever since.

Some great friends have come into my life purely by chance as well. It's funny to compare life stories now and "I was there TOO" moments with the friends that I just happened to come across after years of crossing paths with but never meeting. The right place and right time finally presented itself though, and the rest is history.

Knowing that these vital aspects of my life could be affected by me doing anything different would weigh too heavily on my mind for me to even be able to feel the same way I did back then. So any thoughts of "going back" wouldn't really get any consideration from me anyway if it were a possibility.

I guess I am just going to have to keep reliving my youth one snippet of memory at a time, and reflect on how great today is because of all those fleeting moments long ago.