I saw this poem in a friend's page and it made me think. It made me think about the price of remaining silent. It made me think about being afraid when I go out on the street and how to reclaim the streets and my own life. It made me think that confronting fears is not an extraordinary thing but an everyday event and something that may help who you least expect... you.

moments :: mary oliver

There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.
Like, telling someone you love them.
Or giving your money away, all of it.

Your heart is beating, isn’t it?
You’re not in chains, are you?

There is nothing more pathetic than caution
when headlong might save a life,
even, possibly, your own.

For some reason this Medium post anoyed me to no end.

I think the essence of what annoyed me so much is summed up in the fragment below

So I didn’t buy the ring. We didn’t get married. She moved out. We moved to different cities. I called her once a few years later but now she’s not even on Facebook and we haven’t talked since.

I forgot everything about her basically.

That sums up the 20s — EVERYTHING you think is important and meaningful has absolutely no bearing on your future life.

I started writing the angry reply below:

---

And none of those things that are not true anymore influenced you of today?

So the 5 or 6 non serious books didn’t motivate you to write the good books you’ve been writing “seriously” in your 40s?

If you hadn’t become so good at “bouncing back” in your 20s would you be able to throw yourself completely at things?

Nothing matters? I’ll definitely call bullshit on that one.

Life matters, what you do and don’t do matters. What you regret and what you wish you could still do matters

If you’re going to be that cynical why should we follow you? after all what you have to say doesn’t matter either

---

But then it made me think about why it bothered me so much

Maybe it's because it wasn't until last year that I reclaimed my 20s and what they represented and what they meant to me. All the changes, all the good and the bad things that have happened since have molded me into the person I am today and I wouldn't change my life in the last 22 years for anything in the world.

Or maybe it's the fact that if I accept the fact that nothing I did in my 20s and 30s has any meaning on who I am today then who I am today doesn't have any meaning either. Ever since I've remembered I've searched for those things that give meaning to my life and if I were to accept that nothing I've done and none of the people I've loved in the time I've been in the US matter then what's the point on living? (philosophical point... I am not suicidal)

My passion was theater and I didn’t realize how much I missed it until almost 20 full years went by and I got to engage with it again in a very different context. Something that made me curious about it again and made me want to experiment with theater in a different way and in a very different context and to really appreciate what it is that made me love theater in the first place.